


actualize (the first attack)

by SolaSola



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Assassins (game), Barbarians (D&D), Campaign 01 Season 01: Fantasy High Freshman Year (Dimension 20), Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Gorgug centric, M/M, Murder gremlins, Rotating POV, Shenanigans, Texting, Zelda attempts to wingman on the battlefield because that's just how battle dancers do, polyamorous gorgug thistlespring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28301784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolaSola/pseuds/SolaSola
Summary: Kristen Applebees renamed the groupchat to “BK + 7M + MM Assassins ⚔️💥”Sam:okay I literally only know what one of those words meansOstentatia:why are we in this gc???Gorgug:bad kids + seven maidens + mordred manorlings assassinsRiz:Our adventuring party decided to play a nonlethal-force game of Assassins. Sorry we didn’t really ask before. Do you guys (Seven Maidens) want to join? Zelda said okay.Zelda:it feels like it could be kind of fun??Ostentatia:yeah lmao i’ll be there tomorrow. got your back z[the summer after sophomore year, the bad kids, maidens, and hirelings play assassins. gorgug has zelda's name, but is doing his best to not (nonlethally) kill his girlfriend right away while also figuring out how to ask out a certain ragh barkrock. barely nonlethal PVP, elaborate shenanigans at mordred, and dubious alliances ensue.or: barbarian tactical team-up turned poly triad tries to take down their friends until it’s just the three of them. if their friends don’t (nonlethally) get them first]
Relationships: Ragh Barkrock/Gorgug Thistlespring, Ragh Barkrock/Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring, Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 74
Kudos: 89
Collections: Dimension 20 Big Bang





	1. mordred meeting

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place early in the summer, after the seniors graduate and while Tracker's planning her trip to Fallinel but before Ragh and Tracker actually leave. The Bad Kids and Zelda have just finished sophomore year; Ostentatia and Katja finished their junior year; Danielle, Penny, Sam, Antiope, and Ragh have just graduated; and Ayda, Tracker, and Aelwyn aren't enrolled at Aguefort. Figayda, Trackerbees, Sam/Aelwyn, and Ostentatia/Danielle are all happening in the background if you squint, but these three dorks happen to be very oblivious unreliable narrators busy doing their own mutual pining. 
> 
> Minor warnings that apply to the whole fic: canon-typical adventure violence, canon-typical food crimes. Also, a more lighthearted warning for the fact that this fic absolutely got away from me and became a 30k monster.

_Gorgug—_

For someone who doesn’t live in Mordred, Gorgug sure spends a lot of his weekends on its couch. On the one hand, he carried a _lot_ of furniture in here on move-in day, and that probably counts for something, and also a solid half of his best friends live here. And on the other hand, he specifically can’t bring himself to feel awkward about it at the moment, because he’s currently just really cozy.

Mordred’s living room couch is big and squashy and even he has enough room to tuck all his limbs into a nice corner by one of the armrests. Zelda’s curled up heavily into his side, and they’re sharing earbuds, and Gorgug’s kind of got his nose tucked into her hair because it’s just so _curly_ and _soft_ and smells really good and so he’s really got no other choice.

In freshman year, them cuddling on the couch would probably have been met with a whole bunch of ribbing from his friends, the kind that would probably have made him blush furiously and then duck back into the depths of his hoodie. And there was a terrifying part of spring break when he still wasn’t sure if they were okay. When he wasn’t even sure if they’d ever fall back into this. But it’s the beginning of the summer after a long sophomore year, and here and now, Gorgug just gets to claim this corner of the couch for him and his girlfriend and half-listen to the rest of the Bad Kids (and the whole rest of their party, really) chatting across the living room.

Well. It’s mostly listening to Kristen and Fig, who are predictably the noisy ones. They and Ayda and Ragh are all sprawled out over the living room floor, passing Fig’s nail polish bottles between them (Ragh’s trying to make a rainbow on his toenails). Fabian and Riz and Tracker are much more quietly making playing-video-game noises over by the TV, and Adaine is curled up with a book in Jawbone’s giant squashy armchair with Boggy tucked under one arm. 

"Like, I know it was the recruitment strategy of a fundamentalist cult and we literally fought Daybreak in hell, you know?" Kristen asks the air in front of her. She’s sitting in front of Fig and squirms a little as Fig gently puts a hand on the top of her head to make her stay still while she's braiding, a complicated elven design that makes Gorgug’s head hurt just watching her do it. "But also I really did make a lot of friends at church camp, and there were kayak races, and I made _so_ many godseyes and friendship bracelets, you know?"

"Yeah, and I totally get that! I mean, I didn't go to church camp, but like. I miss my cheer friends sometimes, we used to have sleepovers and braid each others' hair and bedazzle ribbons for competitions together." Fig puts a little rubber band on the end of a braid and picks up another piece of Kristen’s hair. "It's like, I knew all the rules for how to act with them, and it was so fake but at least it was comfortable, you know?"

"I had pen pals from church camp, for years." Kristen says. "I mean, now I think little baby Kristen had terrible taste, because one of them just graduated Mumple and is already engaged, to this real jerk, but.”

Completely unrelated, Kristen adds, "Also, camp games? Were fun as hell! And camp songs!"

"Sooooo much ‘never have I ever.’ And MASH," Fig says, nodding solemnly and also looping a braid around in a big flat spiral. She puts like ten hairpins in her mouth, which looks kind of ghastly and Frankenstein-y to Gorgug. Maybe it’s another of those things girls do that he’ll never understand. 

"Oh my god, so many games of MASH," Kristen says. "Ooh, wait, actually. Did you guys ever play Assassins?"

And he can't see what Kristen’s face looks like because she’s sitting facing away, but Fig’s eyes flash in the way that always reminds Gorgug that one of his best friends is _literally_ an archdevil. She spits pins out of her mouth so she can talk and grabs Kristen’s shoulder, turning her half around where she’s sitting. 

“Kristen. Kristen Kristen _Kristen_. We need to play Bad Kids Assassins.”

Kristen gets a look in her eye that’s frankly scarier than Fig’s. “Fig? Fig Fig Fig Fig Fig. You are absolutely right.”

There’s a sound of triumph from Riz as Fabian tosses his controller to the side to look over at the girls. “Did I hear we’re playing Assassins? And come on, The Ball, you can’t possibly count that as a real win if I put my controller down for you to get it,” he adds.

Gorgug’s played Assassins maybe once, last summer when the Owlbears did it. It’d been exactly as chaotic as you’d expect an Aguefort-sponsored activity to be. Most of the Owlbears didn’t have magic and were just using water balloons to get each other, but there’d been one paladin kid with some nasty smites that Gorgug still remembers. 

That game had lasted for weeks, though, and it hadn’t been with the Bad Kids. As Riz hops off the couch to get drawn into Kristen and Fig’s planning huddle, Gorgug’s reminded of just how terrifying (and neurotic) his best friends can be. This game is probably going to go a _lot_ quicker. And with more lethal force. 

He can’t wait.

* * *

_Zelda—_

For someone who doesn’t live in Mordred, and whose _boyfriend_ doesn’t live in Mordred, Zelda knows she spends, like, a super weird amount of time there. 

She and Gorgug are still sitting curled into each other on the couch even though the entire living room floor has turned into a planning war room. Even Adaine’s put down her book and is scribbling on a spell scroll with Ayda for something they’re trying to whip up. 

Fig finishes something she’s doing and let out a triumphant whoop, and, well. Zelda’s really glad she’s got at least one earbud in. For how quiet Gorgug is, his friends are _loud_. 

“ _Hell_ fuckin’ yes, Bad Kids plus manorlings assassins! Our party, and all of our SO’s, and a _fuckton_ of magic and attacks!” Fig punches the air to demonstrate, forcing Riz to duck out of her way and scoot to a different, less hazardous corner of the rug. 

Zelda as subtly as possible tries to poke Gorgug in the arm so he’ll let her up. _I gotta go_ , she tries to mouth at him, but his face just goes from confused to more confused. 

“You guys are doing a Bad Kids thing, I’ll just. It’s, like, super fine, I’ll just go,” she whispers, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear a little more violently than necessary. Gorgug’s got his friends, and they’ve all been even closer than before ever since spring break, and they’re all gonna go play a loud and violent and chaotic game of Assassins that’ll probably take up this whole weekend. And that’s totally chill, _really_ , Zelda’s been working on being a little more secure in her relationship and reminding herself that it’s _Gorgug_ which really does make it easy. No reason to get so flustered, Zelda. 

“Wait, Zelda,” Gorgug says, and Zelda screws up her face because that was _loud_ and now his whole party’s gonna hear, and—

“Wait, Zelda!” That wasn’t Gorgug, actually. It’s Fig?

“No, like, it’s totally fine!” Zelda says with all the cheer she can muster. “You guys said manorlings, and I obviously don’t live here, lol, so like, you guys have fun!” She paws for her crystal to shove it in her hoodie pocket and get out of this dang room as fast as possible. 

“Wait, Zelda,” Fig says again, “We did say all of the Bad Kids SO’s, you can totally join if you wanna. Wait, dou wanna invite your whole party? Bad Kids, Manorlings, and Maidens!” Fig starts to fist pump again but then turns it into this weird paused-in-midair motion as she turns to see what Zelda thinks. Which, actually, Zelda super appreciates. 

Turning over her shoulder, Kristen says, “You’ve literally been dating Gorgug longer than I’ve been dating Tracker, you’re definitely a Bad Kid if you wanna be, Zelda!” 

So maybe she’s thinking about it. But then Gorgug catches her hand from where he’s sitting up on the couch now, and he says, “It could be kinda fun. To like. Fight with you. More than sparring.” He bounces their hands together a little and grins big, adding, “And you’ve told me all about the Red Waste, I think your party might kick my party’s freaking ass.” 

It’s out of her mouth before she’s really aware of it, but Zelda doesn’t really regret it when she says, “Okay,” and sits back down on the couch. Fig finishes the back half of that fist-pump, and Zelda gives her boyfriend back one earbud, because if she’s staying and getting looped into this, they can at least finish this playlist, dammit. 

Her phone _pings_ a second later, because Fig and Kristen and Riz trying to organize an event are scary efficient. And actually, just scary, period. 

_Fig Faeth added you and 14 others to a groupchat._

_10:57pm_

**Fig:** game time!! Tomorrow 10am MM lawn be there or be square

_Adaine Abernant added Aelwyn Abernant to the groupchat._

**Fig:** oops sorry lol

_Kristen Applebees renamed the groupchat to “BK + 7M + MM Assassins ⚔️💥”_

**Sam:** okay I literally only know what one of those words means

 **Ostentatia:** why are we in this gc???

 **Gorgug:** bad kids + seven maidens + mordred manorlings assassins

 **Riz:** Our adventuring party decided to play a nonlethal-force game of Assassins. Sorry we didn’t really ask before. Do you guys (Seven Maidens) want to join? Zelda said okay.

 **Zelda:** it feels like it could be kind of fun??

 **Ostentatia:** yeah lmao i’ll be there tomorrow. got your back z

The rest of the maidens chime in too, and Zelda puts her crystal down so that she can curl back up against Gorgug. He gives her arm a little squeeze and shoves his nose right back between her horns and says, muffled, “‘S gonna be so fun. Fighting with you. G’nna show you cool spells too.” 

And okay, yes, fine, this is why she loves him, how he can’t help but be genuine and sweet and make her look forward to running around his friends’ house in some almost definitely inadvisable extracurricular combat even when he’s starting to sound sleepy and will probably drive her back home when this playlist ends in a couple of songs.

Because tomorrow, they’ve got some people to assassinate.

* * *

Sodium-yellow streetlights skim across her lap as Zelda reaches over to turn down the metal playlist in the Hangvan’s stereo so she can read the groupchat out loud from her crystal as Gorgug’s driving. The Bad Kids move fast when it comes to quickly planning murder games, and Fig’s just dumped a wall of text that sound like they’re the rules.

Everyone’s going to get a piece of paper at the start of the game with their target’s name on it, apparently via a new spell Adaine and Ayda are inventing. Universal safe zones where no one can kill or be killed in the combatants’ actual bedrooms at Mordred—Tracker’s, Kristen’s, Fig’s, Ragh’s, Adaine’s, and Aelwyn’s—as well as the full homes of everyone who lives outside of the Manor in the case that combat spreads that far. Three ways to successfully complete a kill, by stealing the paper that has someone’s target or by doing half their HP’s worth of damage. Victims must immediately report their deaths to the groupchat. Alliances permitted, but fatal amounts of damage must be dealt by the target’s actual assassin. 

“And then Fig just texted, ‘No-holds-barred combat encouraged, backstabbing of allies also encouraged.’” Zelda shakes her head and clicks her crystal off.

Gorgug pulls the van into the Donovan driveway. “That sure sounds like Fig.”

Zelda unbuckles her seatbelt and slides over to kiss him on the cheek before she gets out. “Um, this is my stop.” It’s a dumb joke between them, started when Zelda was tripping over her own words and still continuing even when they’re walking each other home from school. Or taking the van. Definitely not on a bus with stops, that’d be so random, lol. 

“Hey, also. Assassins alliance? Until we both win and one of us, like, has to kill the other one because we’re the only two left.” Zelda pulls back a little and holds out a pinky to seal the promise. 

“That’s, uh. Confident?” That’s not a no, so Zelda gives him some space to think about it. 

“You don’t have to if you really don’t want to,” she says. She gives him a little poke in the chest, though. “But we’re _barbarians!_ They can’t kill us.” Gorgug makes an _okay fair_ kind of side-to-side nod and hooks his pinky around hers. No take-backsies, no backstabbies. “I’m in this to _win_ , and your party’s not going to know what’s coming.”

“I feel like I should maybe warn them if you’re gonna murder them all? But okay. Pick you up tomorrow?”

Zelda kisses him again, because she wants to and she can. “I’ll be ready. Get some sleep, don’t forget breakfast, sharpen your greataxe!” 

He waves goodbye all the way up until she closes the door, and the smile on her face stays even longer than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I promise Ragh actually gets POV scenes next chapter alskdfj)


	2. kitchen crisis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor warning for Ragh "ten steaks every hour on the hour" Barkrock's gross food habits as well as Zelda "ate a rose on their first date" Donovan's not quite as bad but still not human food habits

_Ragh—_

It’s 6am on game day, and Ragh is fuckin’ _ready_. He’s been living in Mordred since the end of spring break, okay, he knows how to finesse this place. And he doesn’t have to be involved in whatever setup the girls are doing out on the lawn. So he’s got a whole plan for the morning, and he’s gonna be totally set.

This plan involves setting an early alarm and stumbling out to the kitchen, without bothering to put on anything other than his fuzzy pajama pants since he’s not fully awake yet, because in Mordred Manor you gotta get set up fuckin’ early. Which means boosting himself up to sit on the counter in a spot right between the toaster and the coffee pot for easy access to both.

The thing about being in a kitchen that Lydia Barkrock uses is that she keeps her machetes on her person, and she moves fast in her wheelchair, so the safest place for your ankles is to be up off the ground. And the thing about Mordred Manor is that the kitchen gets crowded and chaotic fast, so the real safest place to be in the morning is there before everyone else. 

It’s been a while since his senior bloodrush season ended last fall, but it still feels like a gameday routine: being up early on a weekend, brewing his cup of coffee so he can mix it into a sports bottle along with his orange juice for ideal squirting directly into his mouth, spreading peanut butter on perfectly toasted bagel halves as they come out of the toaster warm, and people watching a little bit to size up his competition as people stumble in and out of the kitchen.

He is super fucking pumped. Ragh loves teamwork, and combat, and chaos with his best friends, and this has all the makings of a really good weekend. Also, he just graduated, so he’s down for pretty much anything right now. He truly has nothing going on. It’s great. 

At about six AM, Kristen and Fig and Adaine come by blearily to grab bagels of their own and enlist his help bringing out the fold-up canopy his mom used to bring to all his club bloodrush games so they can set it up on the lawn. Kristen starts a pot of espresso that Ragh already knows she’s going to forget to come back to actually drink, but he’ll pour it into a shaker bottle or something for her.

Ragh’s scrolling through his phone one-handed, working on his third or fourth bagel (carbo-loading is serious business, and if there’s one thing Ragh knows, it’s game days. Even if it was a different game) and kicking his legs idly against the cabinet when Gorgug lets himself and Zelda in the front door. 

“Hey Gorgug! Come get some fuckin’ game day breakfast!”

“Uh, hey Ragh. Where’s your shirt?” Gorgug kind of tips his head to one side, laughing nervously. 

Ragh looks down at his own—right, shirtless—chest and suddenly feels self-conscious, so he grabs the orange juice jug from the counter next to him and pours them both glasses to have something to do. “Oh, I just, like, didn’t get dressed yet, I guess. Carbs first, shirt later, or something. Uh, you guys wanna bagel and some OJ? Danielle brought, like, some fuckin’ kickass muffins, too.” He gives Zelda a little nod-salute with his chin. “Bro, your druid’s baking is better than Ficus, and she doesn’t even put dusk moss in it.” 

Zelda’s kind of quiet, and Ragh doesn’t super know her that well outside of sparring (and that one rager), but she pipes up, “Danielle’s great! She, um, literally baked goodberry muffins in a campfire in the Red Waste, and they were _so_ good all of us regenerated hit points.” 

Ragh slides her her juice. “Your party’s cool as hell.”

“And we’re gonna kick your ass at Assassins today,” Zelda grins back, and Ragh is suddenly duly terrified of this cool, tiny satyr girl. 

“Like, a Maiden is the last one standing?” Assassins isn’t really a team game, as far as he knows. Ragh’s only played, like, once during the Owlbears thing, and he’d still been going through a whole load of stuff last summer, so maybe he doesn’t totally remember all the rules. 

But Zelda clinks her OJ glass with his water bottle in unspoken agreement, and they both drink their juice as Gorgug keeps doing his own thing, puttering around Mordred’s kitchen to microwave muffins for himself and Zelda. 

Ragh tries not to watch him too obviously. Ragh’s been talking to Jawbone a lot this whole last year, and he’s big enough to admit that he’s maybe almost definitely been crushing on Gorgug for a while. Gorgug was his first kiss, back at prom (the bad prom, not, like, the good prom they had this year a couple weeks before graduation), and Ragh is grateful for that for a lot of reasons. More sleepless nights than he’d care to admit, he’s been painfully aware that if Gorgug hadn’t taken the time to try to get through to him there in between the dragonfire and glaive swings, they might have killed each other there in the gym at prom. Ragh knows how rare second chances like these are. 

Gorgug didn’t have to kiss him, didn’t have to invite him to spar with him and Zelda, didn’t have to ask him along on spring break and save his senior year, didn’t have to be as kind as he is all the time. 

Doesn’t have to be as cute as he is either, pulling the front of his hoodie up to nibble on it for some reason while he’s waiting for the microwave and bopping his head gently to whatever music’s in his headphones. Ragh doesn’t even think he knows he’s doing it. It’s like he’s dancing, a little bit, all the time. 

So Ragh has a crush. But he also thinks Zelda’s cool, as much as as he knows her, and so he really is working on getting over it. Gorgug deserves to be happy, and so Ragh can just enjoy being friends with him right now. 

The microwave beeps. While he’s sliding the muffins onto napkins, Gorgug turns to Ragh. “Thanks for the breakfast recs, see you on the field? After you, like, get ready and everything?” He gives Ragh a little wave. He’s not super making eye contact, which is normal for Gorgug, but his eyes are somewhere down around Ragh’s chest instead of off to the side like usual? It’s a little weird, but Ragh can be chill about it. 

“Yeah, dude, I’ll see you on the field. The lawn. Because, like, Assassins, not Bloodrush.” Ragh clears his throat loudly, then squirts some of his coffee-orange juice mix from his water bottle into his mouth to try to solve whatever’s happening with his voice. He’s _working_ on the crush. He can be chill. He can.

“Hoot growl, dude!” Gorgug says quickly, thankfully oblivious. 

“Yeah, hoot growl!” Zelda echoes, smiling. “We’ll leave you to your carbo-loading. See you on the lawn!”

* * *

_Gorgug—_

He makes it about ten steps outside before he just has to pull his hood up and put his face in his hands because _oh gods Ragh_.

He tries his best to scream into his hands quietly. “I should have just asked him out by now, Zelda! He’s just gonna be shirtless? In the kitchen? This is going to _kill_ me!” 

He makes a noise that’s halfway between “mmph” and “aagh” into his hands, and Zelda tugs on his arm gently so that they both sit down on the grass, right next to Jawbone’s tomato plants outside the back kitchen door. 

“I don’t think it’ll _kill_ you, if you were gonna like. Freak out and go into a rage you could probably beat him,” Zelda teases, and he can hear her smile even though his face is still buried in his hands. Gorgug makes a gap between his fingers so he can make sure she sees him rolling his eyes, but Zelda just leans over to bump her hoodie-clad shoulder into his, half teasing and half a reminder she’s there for him. 

Zelda’s there for him even though Gorgug’s been maybe having a bi crisis for—a while now. It turns out that being here to communicate, after spring break, means that even the serious stuff doesn’t feel as scary to talk to her about anymore. And it turns out that good conversations fit comfortably into Gorgug’s life—over mostly-ignored martial history homework scattered across Zelda’s floor, in between bites of ice cream at Basrar’s every Friday, looking up through the branches of the Thistlespring Tree when they’re lying on the grass after sparring. 

“Zeldaaaa,” Gorgug protests. “Not _him_. This whole thing. This whole thing is gonna kill me.” 

“You wanna talk about it?”

Gorgug thinks about it. (Thinks about _Ragh_ , thinks about Ragh kind of being his first real kiss, thinks about what it might be like to kiss him again.) (Thinks about Ragh’s cute bedhead hair above his shaved sides and what it’d be like to scritch his fingers through it, like when Gorgug fluffs Zelda’s hair out when it’s all tucked up in the collar of her hoodie but also different.) (Thinks about this new Ragh who’s comfortable in Mordred Manor and is just going to be lounging everywhere shirtless like he doesn’t know that _does_ when it’s way too early in the morning for Gorgug’s brain to be online anyway.) (When he’s sitting on the kitchen counter which just puts a lot of _chest_ at eye level, gods.) (Thinks about the crush he’s had on Ragh for. Months. Maybe a year.)

“Nothing I haven’t really told you before,” Gorgug says honestly. 

“You know you’re a good boyfriend,” Zelda says loyally, nudging his shoulder again. “And you’re, like, really smart about how your friends are feeling. Ragh’d be lucky to have you ask him out.”

“What if I don’t ask him right?” They’ve had this whole conversation before. But Zelda knows, and Gorgug knows, that it’s like checking if someone is his dad: sometimes you just gotta say the thing you’re worrying about. Just in case. 

“If you’re working so hard to find the right time, I think you’re gonna find it,” Zelda says. And then she presses comfortingly against his side again as she says, “But, um, if it goes wrong? Worst case, if like, maybe he accepts your friend request, and then unfriends you, and then sends _you_ a friend request, and then deletes it, _twice_? And then makes a bunch of typos, and then drops his phone in a toilet, and then eats the flower he got you? Somehow, I think it’s still gonna turn out super fine.”

Gorgug is in the middle of having a crisis, but his girlfriend can still make him laugh a little despite it all. “I love you,” he says, finally taking his face out of his hands and sort of shoving it into her shoulder instead.

“I love you too,” Zelda says. 

He’s still so grateful that they can say it. Neither of them say it a lot—neither of them really say anything a lot, they’re still both quiet people—but it’s a part of their relationship now. Just like communicating, a lot, is part of their relationship now. 

They got ice cream right when he got back from spring break and talked for _hours_ , at Basrar’s until it closed and then just sitting close together on the floor of Zelda’s room, fingers twined together under her fairy lights and both of them dangling their feet into her cozy sleeping pit. About cold scared nights in the Red Waste and cold scared nights on the Celestine Sea and being worried about each other and about their parties and about their quests. About being back, and being okay, and still wanting to be Gorgug-and-Zelda, and about both of them putting in the work to make that happen. 

And on other days, Gorgug’s talked about Ragh, talked about his first kiss and spring break and about realizing maybe he’s bi like Fig and like Zelda too. And Zelda didn’t let go of his hand, just squeezed it tighter and said, “Thanks for trusting me. That’s like, super cool and I’m proud of you. Do you want to play some crystal games later?”

And later Gorgug’s also talked about a page he looked up in his parents’ binder about polyamory, and about maybe still having feelings for Ragh even though he loves Zelda, and asking Zelda if she would maybe be okay if Gorgug also wanted to date Ragh. And Zelda didn’t let go of his hand then either, and it felt like his whole chest lighting up because he hadn’t ever realized he might get to do this. Gorgug’s still nervous and still hasn’t worked up the nerve to actually _ask_ Ragh but now he can squeeze Zelda’s hand back and drop a kiss on the top of her head where he knows she’s going to giggle but not squirm away and know that he has so much love to give and maybe he’ll get a chance to share it. 

So they’ve talked about it. Gorgug knows he has—well, not permission, that kind of feels like a gross way to put it. But Gorgug knows Zelda’s chill about it, and rooting for him. That Ragh’s gay and it wouldn’t be all three of them dating each other, but that Zelda’s happy just dating Gorgug and that she’s got his back the whole way anyway. And honestly, Zelda’s helped give him a push when he wasn’t sure if he could talk about this stuff with her, and then helped gas him up with a new confidence that she’s had, ever since Spring Break and communication and apparently being asked by Antiope if she wants to maybe get involved in being a leader of the party after Antiope graduates. 

(Confidence looks good on Zelda, and their spring break was _rough_ but Gorgug is so glad he gets to know her on this side of it. That they get to know each other on this side of it.)

Gorgug doesn’t super know a whole bunch of things. He knows more things now, after two big quests and one level of artificer and a lot of conversations with Zelda and a lot of reading his parents’ binder.

What Gorgug knows is: he likes Ragh, and he’s pretty sure Ragh could like him back, and he’s gonna ask him if he maybe wants to be boyfriends because that’d be cool.

He really likes the idea of asking Ragh if he can date him (of asking Ragh if they can fight back to back, if Gorgug can slide fingers through his hair, if they can share hoodies, if he can hold hands with someone whose hands are the same size as his own). 

And if he can ever work up the courage and the right time, he will.

* * *

_Zelda—_

While Gorgug jogs over to the tent to drop off a water bottle for Kristen (weirdly warm and way less than full—Zelda doesn’t get why Ragh put an espresso into a protein shaker bottle, but okay), Zelda stakes out a spot on the lawn for them to sit and wait for the start of the game. Her friends aren’t here yet, which gives her plenty of time to put in her earbuds so she can munch on a muffin-plus-paper-wrapper and peoplewatch to a backdrop of doom metal.

Gorgug says something to Fig and Adaine and then turns around to head back, giving Zelda a little wave and doing this funny half-loping run like he’s rushing just a little. 

“The gnomes put springs in my Converse,” he’d told her sleepily on a video call from the back of the van the weekend that his party was driving back from their quest. His hair had been all sticking up in a bedhead left over from napping against the window, looking fluffy and wild. “N’ I kinda walk bouncy now.” 

“Okay, silly,” Zelda had said, unable to stop herself from smiling at her boyfriend through the phone. “That sounds fun.”

But Gorgug has always kind of walked that way when he’s rushing a little, like someone trying to decide whether to speedwalk or run. He even does that raging and in combat, according to the livestream he’d done from the Sig Figs account that Zelda’s party had watched together. She’d never tell him, but she thinks it’s kind of cute. Like he thinks she’s worth rushing for. (And sue her, also because her bloodrush player boyfriend runs like a puppy that hasn’t quite grown into its legs yet and she can’t help but think that’s adorable). 

Back in the Red Waste these little things were what Zelda would be mentally beating herself up about, awake next to the sleeping rest of her party in their giant tent. _You think the way he_ walks _is cute? Get over yourself, Zelda_. It’d go in circles like that—wondering if she’d been too harsh on him, wondering if she should have stood up for herself more, wondering if there were red flags she’d missed until he left town on a quest without saying goodbye. 

They’re both back from spring break now, and working through a whole bunch of those worries over lots of Friday afternoon dates at Basrar’s. Anxieties are harder to slay than dragonspawn eggs, Zelda’s found out, but the two of them really are doing better. Enough for Gorgug to tell her about crushing on and maybe asking out Ragh, and enough for Zelda to really truly be cheering him on. And to maybe also be thinking up some plans to be the best wingwoman her boyfriend has ever had.

Gorgug super deserves to be happy, and Zelda would never put the words in his mouth (she has enough trouble, like, putting words in her own mouth most of the time).

But Zelda watches her boyfriend’s face light up when he talks about Ragh and feels compersion blooming warm and light in her own chest. Gorgug loves _harder_ than anyone Zelda knows, and he deserves to be loved so much, by so many people, right back. 

Zelda knows her boyfriend, knows he’s been working on tamping out enough courage and the right time to ask Ragh, knows that he’ll find the answer to this puzzle like he has so many other ones. But she also knows that this is Gorgug, who bumps her shoulder back when she bumps him first, who’s okay with her giving him a little push. 

She’s not the person with the plans, most of the time. But battle dancers know better than anyone that love can bloom on the battlefield, and so maybe this game can give her some ideas. Helping her boyfriend ask out his hopefully-future boyfriend—Zelda can get on board with that. 

And right now it’s a bright May day at Mordred Manor, and Gorgug walks up to her side and reaches out his hand, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to smile up at him and twist her fingers around his. He just puts their hands together into his hoodie pocket—to keep them warm, he used to say, but now it’s summer and it’s just nice.

“Hey,” Gorgug says. 

“Hey you,” Zelda says back. “Hey um, you know I like. Meant what I said before.”

Gorgug’s eyebrows do a confused thing and he rubs a hand over the back of his neck sheepishly. “Oh, you mean like with Ragh? Thanks, I, uh—”

“Yes to the thing with Ragh. But also, um, the thing where I’m super gonna kick your party’s ass at Assassins.” Teasing, Zelda sticks her tongue out at him a little and looks up to see his reaction when Gorgug doesn’t say anything right away. And then her boyfriend tackles her backwards into the grass, and she scrambles to get him into a headlock, both of them laughing. 

Gorgug’s half joking as he defends the honor of his party, but they’ve been sparring partners for a long time now and Zelda’s very good at wrestling people taller than her (it’s easier when they’re already both on the ground—that’s Gorgug’s mistake). “Zeldaaaa, take it back we saved the _world_ —oof!” The breath goes out of him but the smile doesn’t as Zelda hooks a leg around his shoulder and climbs over him so she’s sitting on his chest. 

“Fine, fine, I guess we’ll see,” he finally admits, a little strained. He reaches up to grab both of her hands, so much smaller than his that he can completely cover them. They’re warm, and still kind of smell like espresso, and Zelda counts all of this as the first victory of the day. Alliances are dangerous in Assassins, but this one feels worth the risk.


	3. rooftop reveal

Remaining players: Gorgug, Ragh, Zelda, Adaine, Aelwyn, Antiope, Ayda, Danielle, Fabian, Fig, Katja, Kristen, Ostentatia, Penny, Riz, Sam, Tracker

* * *

_Ragh—_

Everyone’s making a big circle around the wizards’ cauldron on the lawn, so Ragh finds himself a place. Katja gives him a thumbs up from his right before turning back to talk to Antiope (yes, all the half-orcs in Elmville know each other; there’s a heritage festival each fall and the Cleavers have a booth where they sell really good cider), and the Maidens’ sorcerer (Samantha? Sam?) is talking to Aelwyn on his left. He’s kind of zoning out, half-watching Gorgug and Zelda talking to each other across the circle, when Adaine yells, “get ready!”

There’s a magical _boom_ and a folded piece of paper rockets out of the cauldron right into his hand. Or what Ragh assumes was the cauldron was, because a giant pastel blue mushroom-shaped Fog Cloud comes rolling towards him and everyone else in the circle.

It’s a light blue version of a blizzard whiteout, even though he knows it’s a bright June day and there isn’t a cloud in the sky outside this creepy magic sphere. Fucking wizards, man.

But it clears faster than he’s expecting, and then Ragh finds himself having not moved an inch. Everyone else, though? Gone from the spot.

“Dang. Did everyone else have a plan or something?” That’s Gorgug’s voice (Of course Ragh would know Gorgug’s voice). He hadn’t moved either from where he was, across the circle from Ragh, and he shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket and walks closer so they don’t have to shout to talk.

“I mean, I kind of wasn’t worried about me surviving because I can just, you know, hit people?” Ragh says. “I guess I didn’t have a plan to get everyone else? Were we supposed to have a plan?”

“I don’t know, our friends are kind of intense, they probably have a plan. Or I mean. All of them separately. Have different plans.”

“Who’d you guys get?” He’d never admit it, but Ragh jumps a little at the sound of Zelda’s voice. He hadn’t noticed her, and she’s got guarded eyes and a hand on one of her sword hilts. His mom Lydia used to wield twin machetes, and Ragh has a very healthy fear of barbarians with big knives.

Gorgug says, “Oh, uh, I didn’t even check.” He digs into his hoodie pocket and unfolds his little piece of paper as Ragh checks his own, which has magically burrowed its way into his fist.

“I don’t have either of you,” Zelda says carefully.

“I got Penny,” says Gorgug.

“Adaine,” Ragh says. He can see Zelda visibly relax (Ragh’s realizing he’s never really seen battle dancer Zelda, just Gorgug’s-cool-girlfriend Zelda. This Zelda is _scary_ ).

“Oh thank gods, if one of you was about to kill someone else right here I don’t even know what I’d do.” Zelda says. She opens her mouth to say something else when all three of their phones chime at the same time (well, Gorgug’s just vibrates. Ragh’s chimes, super loud.)

_10:04am_

**Sam:** guess who’s dead lmao 

**Sam:** i’m gonna go inside and make some guac if anyone else is dead and wants some. or alive tbh i don’t really care.

“Who’s Sam?” Ragh asks.

“Their sorcerer,” Gorgug explains. “But like. I didn’t think she was gonna die right away, she has magic and stuff.”

“ _You_ have magic and stuff,” Ragh points out. “Oh! Team up? You, me, also you?” He points at Gorgug, and then Zelda. “Fuckin’ barbarian _squad_ , dudes— and dudette.”

It doesn’t take long for them to seal the alliance with a triple fistbumb and then to quickly decide none of them are interested in puzzling out who else has who as a target. They also don’t care about hunkering down and waiting for people to come for them, so they’re just going to, as Ragh puts it, “fuckin’ _go get it_.”

Penny’s too sneaky, and they don’t know where Zelda’s target Ostentatia would be, but Adaine’s probably in or around her safe zone doing smart person oracle things. And, fortunately for them, being a nice easy squishy target. 

That’s as much of a plan as any of them can really think of, so that’s all the plan that’s going to get made. It’s time to fucking attack. And, as their phones remind them with yet another death announced in the groupchat, try not to get killed. 

_10:29am_

**Aelwyn:** well, that’s that. i’ll be inside helping with the guac 

**Aelwyn:** and removing all these arrows i guess because all the healers are still running around murdering 

**Katja:** you spellcasters are so squishy

* * *

_Gorgug—_

Gorgug doesn’t really know how to make a whole big plan for this game, but Ragh’s played it with the bloodrush team for a bunch more years than him by now, so he’s content to listen and nod along as Ragh talks and they make their way towards the tower. 

“We gotta watch out for the casters, man, if Adaine punches me with her giant fuckin’ fist spell I would straight up, like, peri—” Ragh doesn’t get to say what he would straight up do, because they’ve rounded the corner within range of Adaine’s wizard tower and she’s _sniping_ at them before they can even see her. Holy _crap_. Gorgug’s suddenly very glad he pulled up his hoodie as a Cone of Cold skims the top of his hood and instantly withers the rosebushes behind him. Almost without thought, he dives to the side on top of Ragh. Game’s on, ambush’s off. That’s probably closer to the barbarian way anyway. 

“No fair, your room’s a safe zone!” Gorgug bellows, hucking a hand axe that doesn’t even come close to hitting Adaine. Because, as it turns out, she’s not in her wizard tower. She’s somehow gotten herself _onto the roof_ , where she grins and calls down gleefully, “Not in the room, not in the safe zone!” before firing a blast of something that makes a circle of grass right next to Zelda go from green to brown to a weird, shimmering purple. 

Gorgug’s grabbing his second hand axe when Zelda grabs his hand and yanks him to where she and Ragh have already flattened themselves against the bottom of the wizard tower, too close to the wall for Adaine to hit them. 

“Hoot— hoot growl, dude,” Ragh’s saying, a little out of breath but fist-bumping Zelda—she must have yanked him to safety too, the most alert and agile of the three of them. He’s got his hands on his knees like he’s facing down a bloodrush defensive unit, and he’s looking at Gorgug. _Like Gorgug’s the captain. Oh shoot._ “Anyone got a plan?” 

Gorgug does not have a plan. Gorgug is not usually the one who has a plan. To be honest, Adaine is the one who usually has a plan, and she’s currently on the roof ready to blast them with Chromatic Orb. 

Zelda interrupts his brief bluescreening and turns to Ragh, quick and quiet. “Ragh, um, you’ve got Adaine’s name, right?”

Ragh nods. 

“Gorgug, can you get us up on the roof? Ragh’s gotta grapple Adaine and get her paper. It’ll be a little faster than dropping her.” 

“I can boost you guys, and you guys can both climb,” Gorgug nods. He’s mostly relieved that Zelda had a plan. Before any of them can overthink it more, he goes, “One, two, three, _GO!_ Spring break, I believe in you! Uh. Or just. I believe in you. No spring break.” He feels a little sheepish. Zelda looks at him like he’s grown horns. “Anyway, let’s _go!_ ”

He casts Jump on his Converse and goes, “Hoot growl hoot growl!” as he gives Ragh a magically-superpowered boost up the side of the tower. Mordred Manor is old and craggy, and Ragh’s finding plenty of handholds even as little bits of stone crumble away under his Jordans. Gorgug whips his head around to find Zelda, but she’s already scrabbling up the side of the tower—who knew goat legs could be so helpful? 

Gorgug’s the last one up, and he’s just in time to see Ragh absolutely leap at Adaine, grappling her in midair. It’s kind of majestic, especially knowing what Adaine’s new Strength is after their spring break quest—Ragh leaps like some kind of pouncing cat, and Adaine’s eyes widen, and her hands stretch out as if she’s going to be able to fend off two hundred pounds of barbarian—

And then Adaine—no, _Fig_ —lets the disguise fall. 

Ragh barely manages a “Bro, what the fu—” before Fig takes advantage of his surprise to strum a sick chord that vibrates through all their bones. Before anyone can move, she’s Prestidigitated a giant paint _splat_ of fake paintball spatter all over him, plucked the slip of paper with Adaine’s name on it out of his pocket, and cackled, “Enjoy being _dead_ , sucker!”

The air gets hellishly hot and with a bass note so low it crumbles more stone off the tower, she Dimension Doors right out of Ragh’s grapple and away somewhere into the depths of Mordred Manor.

Ragh is on his ass on the roof tiles, spattered with seven different colors of neon Prestidigitated paint and very much out of the game. Zelda has a hand slapped across her face trying to hold in a laugh. And Gorgug is looking at the place where Fig vanished, his jaw hanging open. 

“Holy _shit_ ,” he says. “This takes the game to a whole nother level.” 

* * *

_Ragh—_

Ragh is. Well. He's pretty fucking bummed. He was gonna get to fight next to Gorgug and Zelda, and that Jump spell Gorgug did to get them to the roof was super cool, and they would have been a really good team, and now he's dead.

"So Adaine... was Fig?" Ragh says. "Holy shit."

"Or Fig was... Adaine?" Gorgug's doing that thing where he kind of tilts his head really slowly when he's trying to figure something out, and god Ragh is so fucked for finding it kinda cute.

"I don't even know, dude, but holy shit," Ragh says again. "Honestly? That was so badass I don't even know if I can be mad about it, you know? But holy shit. I'm dead."

"You gotta text it in, dude," Gorgug says, and Ragh digs around in his jeans pocket for his crystal. For a second Ragh thinks Gorgug's gonna give him a hand up, but Gorgug just folds himself down to sit on the super uneven roof tiles with him while Ragh opens up the groupchat, and Zelda does too. 

“Yeah yeah, thanks man.”

_10:57am_

**Ragh:** you guys gotta win this one for me

 **Fabian:** holy shit my guy you died? already?

 **Fig:** f in the chat for ragh

 **Katja:** f

 **Riz:** f

 **Gorgug:** g

 **Gorgug:** *f

 **Riz:** who got you, ragh?

 **Fabian:** yeah who could have taken down the OWLBEARS MVP

 **Ragh:** fig

 **Ragh:** you traitor

 **Ragh:** don’t f in chat me

 **Fig:** ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ betrayal’s the name of the game bitchessss

 **Fig:** how dare you expose me ragh if you weren’t already dead I’d kill you

* * *

_Gorgug—_

It's weird, because Ragh's such a big person. But Gorgug thinks about Ragh, watches Ragh, and he looks for all the little things instead while Ragh’s futilely defending himself in the groupchat. 

Moving his left hand over the stubbly back of his undercut sheepishly. Frowning in a way that wrinkles up his forehead. Pecking out a text one-handed to defend himself in the groupchat. 

Ragh never looks small, that'd be ridiculous. But Gorgug watches his best friend sitting on his ass on the roof and covered in rainbow paint, and he doesn't like seeing Ragh like this. Ragh is loud and happy and badass, he just is, and Gorgug can’t quite make the Ragh he’s seeing now fit into his brain. 

So he sits down on the roof next to him, and so does Zelda, and Gorgug slings his arms around his best friend and his girlfriend. It kind of feels like they're all in a midgame bloodrush huddle. Except, you know, how they're sitting on their butts on the roof of Mordred Manor, which is so slanted that Zelda's shoulders are actually about even height with Ragh's and Gorgug's. He can reach everyone better this way, actually.

Zelda scoots in a little (she's kind of crouching so it's just her feet shuffling, like she's a little ball with feet sticking out, and it's unfairly cute) and copies the thing Gorgug's doing with his arms, and Ragh finally gives up on the groupchat and does the same thing. Gorgug tries to channel his best captain-y voice.

"So, uh, what do we wanna do from here? Team," he tacks onto the end. It does count, doesn't it? They're a team, this three-person band of barbs.

"I'm real sorry, you guys, I really wanted to do, like, badass barbarian stuff with you guys, and then I just fuckin' died." Ragh twists his mouth in an expression that makes one of his tusks poke out more than the other. It’s a little endearing and it makes the next words spill out of Gorgug’s mouth before he even really thinks about it: "It's okay, Ragh, you’re totally still on this team! You could be like, a spy? Like some kind of—cool ghost spy!"

“I don’t want to drag you guys down, though, are you sure?” Ragh’s eyes scan over Gorgug’s face and he nods as hard as he can in reply. The idea that Ragh wouldn’t be wanted—the idea that he’d drag them down—is something he wants to shove as far away from him as possible. And shred to bits with his axe. Ragh's whole face lights up and Gorgug feels a pleased little surge in his gut, like rage but lighter. “ _Fuck_ yeah, I’m so glad you’re not kidding. Ghost spy is _the coolest shit_ , I’m gonna make sure you guys _win_!” Ragh's grin is big, and sloppy, and happy, and the fist pump he does almost uppercuts Gorgug on the way up. 

Zelda does a little _pat pat_ on Ragh's shoulder. "It'll be really cool, Ragh," she adds. "Also, that flying leap you did at Adaine—at Fig?" She looks at Gorgug, and he just shrugs, which does funky things to everyone's arms and shoulders since they're all hunched over together. "At Adaine, I guess, was super cool. I'm sorry you died."

Ragh straightens up his shoulders a little bit. “Thanks, guys,” he says. “Now, did you guys wanna keep fucking’ killing people like we planned, or what?”

Zelda peeks over the edge of the roof at the patio. “Hey, I think I see someone we can go for.” Ragh scrambles back to his feet, and Gorgug’s glad he’s back in the game. Spying later, attacking _now_. 

* * *

_11:20am_

**Danielle** : can’t believe i was just trying to get my fox some water and my own girlfriend struck me down in cold blood

 **Ostentatia** : it was me or willem and you chose willem ig

 **Ostentatia** : sorry babe guess you gotta watch your back better next time

_11:21am_

**Ostentatia** : guess i also gotta watch my back better next time lmao

 **Riz:** Ostentatia, who killed you?

 **Danielle** : it was Zelda

 **Fig:** Riz you’re not supposed to ask people who killed them that’s cheating!

 **Riz:** I’m using my resources, namely that all of you are gullible and don’t care about rules

 **Sam** : o&d come inside we made guac to drown your sorrows

 **Sam:** also aelwyn keeps saying she wants a heal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter to feature art by my amazing Big Bang partner Juniper! There'll be other previews throughout the fic, and you can see the full piece on their tumblr!


	4. war room wreckage

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Antiope, Ayda, Fabian, Fig, Katja, Kristen, Penny, Riz, Tracker

* * *

_Gorgug—_

The thing about teaming up with two other barbarians is that none of them really have a better plan than “climb around all the walls and check all the windows in the manor until they find Kristen or Penny or something else interesting.” Gorgug doesn’t really mind, though—it seems like it makes sense, for three people who are mostly good at hitting things until they fall down, and it’s plenty hard enough for him to play bodyguard and keep up with Zelda as she darts around the walls. 

Ragh decides to bow out so he can clean up after getting smacked with Fig’s spellwork and a whole lot of paint and also so he can try to poke around doing some ghostly spying. For now, it’s just Gorgug and Zelda, aided by springy sneakers and satyr hooves as they flatten themselves to the wall and inch along the outside of the second story of the manor.

“Everything good over there?” Zelda calls from where she’s balancing on the tiniest possible windowsill. 

Gorgug nods, doing his best to straighten up his shoulders to jokingly salute her one-handed with his weapon while still hanging on to the wall. (And if he also pretends to spin and then fumble and then catch his handaxe to make her laugh at him, because her nose just does this really cute scrunched-up wiggle when she laughs, well, then, maybe he does). 

While Zelda inches closer to the window and tries to see what she can without getting spotted, Gorgug does his best to scan where they are. Mordred’s almost as familiar territory as the Thistlespring Tree is to him at this point, but he hasn’t exactly spent a lot of time hanging off the side, twenty feet up. He’s gotta admit, the view’s not bad—it’s a cloudless summer day with just a little bit of wind and rustly cicada noises coming from the woods that back right up to this side of the manor. Maybe, uh, not exactly the best spot to hang out, because his hand’s starting to get a little tired and he has to switch his axe to his left hand for a bit? But, like, not the worst. Maybe a six out of ten. Gorgug’s no Fig with her scary German Shepherd impression, but he’s supposed to be keeping watch, too. There’s still no one in sight, everyone else probably inside or in the forest or, like, invisible because they’re super magic. 

He switches his handaxe back to the hand it’s supposed to be in—it feels comically small compared to the gravity greataxe he’d much rather be using, but he kind of can’t use that right now because he needs one hand to hold on to the wall. Gorgug’s not scared of heights, but he’s definitely got nothing on Zelda, who’s hopping around the stone like she doesn’t even have to look where she’s putting her feet. 

Zelda returns from scouting that window and waves him forward so they can move on to the next one, Gorgug inching along the wall while Zelda waits. 

She nudges him with a shoulder when he catches up. “Okay, um, now that Ragh’s not here, I’m just saying!”

Oh _no_. His girlfriend is, in the best possible way, a menace. 

“You guys just work really well in combat together, like I definitely see it, and I just think that while we’re all teamed up it could be a good opportunity for you to ask him out if you wanted, like I’d be super down to help you brainstorm—”

“Zeldaaaaa!” He jokingly makes a big show of cranking up the volume on his headphones, but Zelda just smiles at him and nudges him again.

Usually Zelda’s the flustered one of them. Oh, how the tables have turned.

“I got your back, but I’m super not gonna shut up about this, you deserve to ask a cute boy out!” she chirps gleefully. 

Gorgug is really, really glad he and Zelda figured everything out after spring break and now they know they have each others’ backs all the time. He really is, and he knows she has his back, she’s just very. Insistent. This new Zelda is scary, and she doesn’t even have her swords out right now. 

He just shakes his head. “Next window?”

There’s no way she doesn’t see through his super transparent excuse, but Zelda just moves onto the next window to keep casing the joint. And doesn’t stop teasing him at the same time. Of course his extremely cool girlfriend can multitask.

“Just know I’m rooting for you!”

It’s definitely not because he’s pretty sure he’s flushing a shade of deep forest green that Gorgug decides to apply himself more to scouting and definitely not listening to his girlfriend list all the very very good reasons to ask out Ragh. But then there’s a _whoosh_ somewhere up above him, and something. Squishy? Like something unsuctioning above him, maybe in the gutters lining the roof. 

Now that he’s squinting at it more closely, he’s at least 95% sure something’s moving up there. Does anyone clean the gutters at Mordred? Maybe there’s some gunk up there, and a bird or a squirrel or something. 

“—and, like, coming up with a way for him to still be involved was a super smart thing to do, and also really nice of you?” He glances over to see Zelda shake her head—no one in that window either, then—and start moving over to the next one.

“Hey, um, Zelda?”

There’s a nasty sucking noise, and when Gorgug looks up he can see something drippy and brown, with a pointy little nose. And a mouth with some very shiny, very sharp teeth. 

Not a squirrel, definitely not a cute squirrel. He hefts his dinky handaxe as threateningly as he can and then it _swoops_ at him on muddy elemental wings, dipping and bobbing like it’s weighed down by the muck all over it.

“Get _outta_ here, buddy,” Gorgug mutters, and he has to bash it with his axe a couple of times before it finally splats. 

“Hey Zelda? I found some—” 

“—and you’ve been talking about how you think he’s cute for, like, months, and—”

He has a sinking suspicion that one little creature isn’t all there was, not if this is Assassins and someone else is coming after him. Who here can summon elementals? Gorgug gets his axe back into ready position in his hand when sure enough, two more mud mephits stick out gross, drippy tongues and start sliming their way out of the gutter towards him. 

No time for thinking, these little guys are _fast._ One of them hurks and spits a gob of mud at him and he has to twist out of the way, not fast enough to avoid getting one of his feet glued to the wall by it. _Fuckers_. 

He smacks at it with the axe and yells, “Zeldaaa! I’m kind of struggling here!” 

Oh, gods, she’s still talking about Ragh. “I know, but even if it’s hard to be honest about your feelings it can also really be worth it to—”

Gorgug just _yells,_ goes into a rage (not at Zelda, his girlfriend is very kind and sweet and helping him out. At these little mud mephit with fists that are more annoying than dangerous but still hurt) and clobbers one of them out of the air by throwing his axe. Crap, now he’s down one handaxe and there’s still another mud creature, flying right at his face and spreading its wings like some kind of horrible bat. He’s gonna have to try to balance on this windowsill and let go so he can use both his hands because this absolutely needs a greataxe, it’s too close now. Gorgug lets go and reaches for the axe on his back and he can already feel himself start to tilt off-balance, but his axe just has to get there first, if he can just— 

“I’m just saying, like, I definitely see it! And you should totally go for it, I promise it wouldn’t be weird—“

His whole field of view is the mud mephit in his face, chittering in this horrible squelchy way that makes him want to turn up the volume on his headphones as soon as humanly possible. He holds his breath and squeezes his eyes shut and just _swings_.

“Zelda, I am sure that what you’re saying? Is really supportive and important but _doyoumindhelpingmeouthere!_ “ 

There’s a nasty, sticky bursting noise and the second he feels his axe make contact Gorgug twists as fast as he can back towards the wall, hands scrabbling over stone. 

A warm hand grabs his wrist and Zelda squeaks, “Oh gods I’m so sorry, are you hurt?” She looks mortified as she hauls him back up, and then he can feel the soft fabric of her hoodie cuff wiping across his face, taking off the gross mud because apparently these mephits freaking explode when they die. Double gross. Zelda still manages to make the gesture sweet, though, looking anxiously at him as cleans elemental guts off his face. Gorgug breathes out with a relieved _whoosh._

“I’m not hurt. I think someone summoned them up in the rain gutter? Usually the only pests around here are ghosts, I don’t think they usually have goop elementals. These are freakin’ gross.” Gorgug makes a face. “There might be more?”

“Eugh, super gross. I’m gonna—“ Zelda tentatively reaches a sword up to bang on the metal gutter and has to jerk back as four more gross chittering goopy mud mephits swarm out, homing straight for Gorgug. He can see their goopy little fists balling up, ready to strike, and he starts to bare his teeth to hiss right back at them. 

“Get _away_!” Zelda screeches. The flat of her scimitar smacks the first one once, then twice, and now both Gorgug and Zelda know to duck out of the way when it explodes. Oops, Jawbone’ll probably want to bring out the pressure washer to clean up this wall later. 

There are more, Gorgug is helpfully reminded when a tiny mucky fist swishes right by his face. He can feel his voice getting higher as he says, “Hey Zelda, um, thank you for the assist I’mfinethere’sjustalotofthem? _There’sjustalotofthem_!” She’s so much faster here than he is, picking them apart with her swords while he just resorts to trying to grab them up and hurl them out over the woods like they’re tiny, screeching softballs. Fighting back to back is intuitive now, after so many months of sparring together and sitting in on each others’ classes just because. Quickly, the two of them clean up the conjured mephits like they’re nothing but so many mosquitoes, and Zelda scoots over to him and gently reaches for his face, poking at his nose with a finger.

“Um, what are you—”

“Oh, you just. You just had some schmutz on your face.” She holds up her hand like it explains anything, both of them covered in mud even though they dodged most of the attacks. Zelda’s got a tiny, crusty handprint on her shoulder from one of them trying to grab on, which Gorgug does his best to brush off for her. They both end up awkwardly swatting at each other until they burst into giggles, so messy but also happily victorious in this little fight.

Gorgug clears his throat. “I, uh, just to be clear? Super appreciate your commitment to helping me ask out Ragh, I just—”

Zelda’s still flushed an embarrassed shade of pink. “Haha, yeah, maybe not while you’re being attacked?” 

“Yeah, um. That’d be good.” Gorgug wipes off a last gob of mud mephit goop on the flagstones and looks up at Zelda again. “Back to the windows, then? And hopefully no more attacks?”

“Not gonna stop helping you brainstorm how to ask out Ragh. I bet Fig would help me trap you guys together somewhere.” He’s not sure she’s joking. 

Gorgug just groans and follows her. Who knew the worst attacks were going to come from inside the team?

* * *

_Zelda—_

They’re almost done with the second story, and still no Penny or Kristen. There’s a last second story window right next to them, and a mysteriously shuttered third story window above. Zelda’s waiting for Gorgug to catch up and craning her neck to peek further inside, trying to figure out whether to try climbing to the higher one. 

The shutters slam open above them and there’s a flash of light off a wire as it shoots by her field of vision. It’s rapidly followed by a goblin who’s absolutely on a freaking mission, just a blur of green helicoptering his long tail as he zips right by Zelda and Gorgug, swinging off into the woods. Like some kind of spider monkey super spy. With some kind of _grappling hook gun_? 

Zelda whips her head around to look at Gorgug, who’s right next to her by now. He’s somehow unfazed by the way one of his party members just jumped out a window and grappling gunned himself into the woods, just shrugging as best he can when he’s hanging onto a wall by his fingertips. Or maybe just hamming up how tired he is from that mud mephit encounter, because she _knows_ he’s got more endurance than that but also he doesn’t have goat legs and he also happens to be cute when he gets a little tired and floppy. “That’s just Riz,” he says, as if that explains anything. “Probably was watching out the window and saw whoever he’s after through the trees?”

Zelda doesn’t know Gorgug’s party, like, super well, but the more time she spends with them the more questions she has. 

“‘S just the way Riz is, I guess. Maybe he just didn’t have either of us so it was okay when we made all that noise with the mephits?” He suddenly lights up, big black eyes widening. “We should loot his room for clues! He’s probably got, like, a whole mile of red string up on boards in there, let’s go!”

And he scrambles up to the windowsill and flops immediately onto the floor, taking up half the space before Zelda can do a full check of the place. 

It’s—yeah. Zelda has even more questions about what exactly the Bad Kids’ rogue does, because she’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually live in this house and yet all the walls in this room are covered in cork board and pictures of the Maidens and the Bad Kids and notes in illegible scrawl and just about a Fantasy Michael’s worth of red yarn and— 

Gorgug pops his head up from the floor. “Are those _blueprints?”_

* * *

_1:07pm_

**Katja:** your guys’ rogue is a stone cold killer, gods

 **Katja:** in unrelated news, rip me

 **Penny:** i trained him well (◕ᴗ◕✿)

_Gorgug—_

There are blueprints of Mordred Manor—did Riz break into a county clerk’s office for these? There are photos of everyone’s faces, blurry shots that look like they were taken at about 400% zoom. There are bulletin boards everywhere, things tacked up on the walls and more corkboards leaning against those corkboards to shrink the room’s actual floor space to probably two thirds of its normal size. Riz doesn’t even live here, and this room screams Riz more than Gorgug had known any space possibly could. Maybe his friend needs a little bit of gentle intervention about his coffee habit, because it’s been less than 24 hours since Fig first came up with this idea, and this room looks like he’s been hiding out in it for weeks. Can Riz time travel?

Zelda puts her crystal away and pipes up, “I think Katja might be right actually. I’m scared of your rogue and I didn’t think I could be scared of rogues, Penny’s like the nicest person in our whole party.” She tilts her head curiously at one of the corkboards that looks like all the yarn makes a big circle, connecting everyone in a circle. 

Riz isn’t here, but Gorgug’s still on edge. Sue him, maybe it’s his own face looking at him from the wall. About twenty times. 

It’s the only way he notices when a floorboard creaks and he’s instantly between it and Zelda, greataxe up.

It doesn’t actually prevent the rapier that he doesn’t even see coming from jabbing under his ribs, which he knows more by the pain of it than by actually seeing anything. There’s a flash in the corner of his eye—light off the blade?—and a rustling behind some of the boards and he’s staring at nothing different than a second ago.

There’s a hole in his hoodie where there wasn’t a second ago and Zelda’s eyes are trained on one of the clue boards that’s ever-so-slightly ajar. Gorgug looks at her, and looks back, and trusts, and then goes right into a rage, clobbering clue boards aside looking for their assailant. He only catches a flash of brown hair and silver rapier and little halfling footsteps hiding again and then she’s gone again. _Penny._ Convenient, since she’s his target.

He’s not sure to wait for her to come out again or try to attack but then Zelda _screeches_ as she dodges a dagger and _it’s absolutely fucking on, you don’t get to do that_. 

It’s combat in a way smaller space than he’s used to, his axe scraping the ceiling when he tries to swing it, but he hasn’t been sparring with Zelda for a year and a half for nothing. When Penny tries to dart between his legs, so quick he almost misses her, he just lets himself fall with a _whump_ into a grapple.

Penny is small but she’s also deadly, as the rapier jabs across his hoodie and also his face will attest, so he doesn’t feel too bad when between him and Zelda, they get her solidly cornered and, for the purposes of this game, thoroughly dead. In a corner with no clue boards to hide behind—they learned that lesson pretty quick. 

Penny doesn’t seem too put out by it, at least, just tapping out a “I’m dead!” message to the groupchat and pocketing her crystal again before the notification even dings on his phone. Rogues, man. She gamely hands over her paper to Gorgug and just raises an eyebrow at him as he stands (hunched over, the ceiling in this secret war room is painfully low and both Zelda and Penny get to be perfectly fine while he scrapes his head against the spiderwebs) to let her up.

Penny smiles, sweet as pie, and pokes a piece of paper into Gorgug’s hand. “Well, that’s interesting. Good job, guys, got me fair and square! Have fun!” she calls, and she toes open the floorboard into some kind of secret passageway crawlspace that she must have come from. “I’m gonna go see if any of the dead folks in the living room wants a snack, feel free to come by!” Zelda just waves, and Penny disappears with just a flash of a raised eyebrow. 

That went. Fast, even considering that Gorgug’s the lumbering hulk in here and Zelda and Penny are pretty matched for chasing each other around a tiny room. Gorgug frowns. “Did that seem sort of easy to you?”

Zelda shrugs. “She’s a rogue, right, and you had her grappled, I wouldn’t put sneaky stuff past her but that seemed pretty reasonable to me? Why did she say ‘interesting’?”

Gorgug’s pretty okay with asking lots of questions, but answers are still a little out of his area of expertise (maybe they’re in the wizardry books he’s not allowed to read? Maybe he’ll never know), so he just unfolds his paper. One kill each for him and Zelda is pretty heartening—maybe they really can keep going like this.

Gorgug checks his paper.

Oh, interesting doesn’t even _begin_ to cover it. 

He has Zelda’s name.

His mind’s going a mile a minute but really there’s no choice, is there.

He could kill her right now, and she’d probably still join his side and help him out, if he wants to win this. 

He could wait, and kill her later if he thinks of a smarter idea.

But he can’t, Zelda wants to win this and he knows she can and it’d honestly be really fun to see. Gorgug shoves his paper as deep into his hoodie pocket as it can go and puts both his hands in, too, like they can protect it somehow. Nope, the only way to deal with this is to save it, because he can’t kill Zelda, he can’t. They’re just going to have to take down all her targets together. Because at the heart of Gorgug Thistlespring there is a lot of love for his girlfriend and no room for any scheming. 

Nope nope nope he definitely can’t do it but they also only just got over such a communication mess over spring break, he can’t _lie to his girlfriend_ , that would be so mean! 

Zelda looks up at him, curious, and he stammers, “Uhhh, we should go see if Ragh has any leads on Kristen? Because she’s your target? Just to like! Take turns, you know. That way it’s fair.”

Oh, gods, this is going to be rough. But’s Gorgug, and he’s just going to have to keep going. 

_1:45pm_

**Penny:** i’m dead!

 **Aelwyn:** come to the living room the dead girls club made snacks and we’re watching solace’s next top model

 **Riz:** who killed you, penny?

 **Penny:** no spoilers ✿


	5. sunset skirmish

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Antiope, Ayda, Fabian, Fig, Kristen, Riz, Tracker

* * *

_Ragh—_

It’s Ragh’s first spy mission, and he absolutely does not know how to do this but he is nothing if not a good team player and Zelda is part of his team now. He washes off and gives himself a little “hoot growl, hoot growl” under his breath in the mirror to psych himself up. No more red paint, time to get going. To find Penny? Or mostly Kristen, now that apparently Penny’s just texted she’s dead. He feels a little surge of pride on Gorgug’s behalf. _That’s my boy!_

There’s the sound of Aelwyn’s bubblegum pop music coming through the kitchen speakers, though, so maybe he’ll stop by and allow himself a snack and try to get some intel. He likes Sam and Aelwyn. The three of them haven’t run in the same circles ever since prom, really, ever since Dayne and Penelope, but he’d have to be really oblivious to miss how much time Sam’s been spending at Mordred ever since Aelwyn moved in after spring break. And there’s just something comforting about the gossipy popular girl energy that he got used to, at bloodrush parties. Also, Sam’s guac recipe is out of this world. 

His mom waves at him from where she’s tucked herself under a lap blanket on the couch, a bowl of Sam’s guac in hand. “Having fun?”

“Hell yeah! Uh, what are you guys doing?”

Sam tips her crystal screen towards him so he can see. They’re looking at some pretty photos of the Red Waste, all big starry skies and rust-red dirt and one picture that she scrolls by pretty fast that just looks like her crystal got swallowed by a dragon. Ragh doesn’t 100% get it, but okay. It looks like his mom is having fun.

“Aren’t you dead?” Aelwyn gives him a weird look as he straightens himself up to head back out. “We set up like. Drinks and snacks and shit.”

“Thanks, dude, but like, gotta keep my head in the game, I might not be able to win but we win as a _team_ , you know?”

Aelwyn looks at him blankly. “I have no idea why you would want to keep getting shot at out there, but if you’re having fun, I guess.” 

“Fuck yeah I am!” Aelwyn’s not, like, one of the bros, but she’s, like. Chill. Beneath her whole ice queen persona, they’ve spent enough nights watching Solace’s Next Top Model on Mordred’s living room couch for Ragh to not secretly enjoy her whole deal. “Hey, have you guys seen—“ _wait, right, he’s a spy, he shouldn’t just tell them things. Not Kristen, then._ “—have you guys seen Tracker? Totally no reason, just curious.”

Good spying, Ragh. 

“Kristen killed me first thing,” Sam says easily, “but that was literally just in this room because I wasn’t paying attention and she hit me with her staff, so. No clue where they are now. Maybe try the backyard?” 

A fireball slams into the sliding glass door to said backyard with a roar and everyone in the room whirls around. Sam drops her crystal in shock, and the flame dissipates as fast as it came, leaving behind just a gross layer of soot. 

“That’ll be a next weekend project to clean up,” Lydia deadpans.

Sam’s barely pried her crystal out from where she dropped it in between the couch cushions when she yelps again as what looks like a comet made of purple sparkles screams through the sky and helpfully clears a patch on the door for them to see through. Purple sparkles, huh. Ragh doesn’t know what kind of magical firefight’s he’s about to see out there, but he’d bet a livestream’s worth of crab that he’s just found Kristen.

 _Great_ spying, Ragh. Backyard it is.

It takes a second for him to actually find Gorgug and Zelda—oops, maybe should have decided on some kind of meet-up point before they split up, that’ll be something to keep working on as a team—but it only takes a second of explaining (wild gesturing and a lot of “Kristen? Guiding Bolts. Wizards? Big battle in the backyard? Magic everywhere, it slammed into the patio door like WHOA and honestly looked super dope. Let’s go kill people!”) before they’re all taking off and running out the side door into the backyard. Gorgug looks freaked out for some reason, but Ragh figures it’s maybe something to do with the rapier punctures in his hoodie or the spiderwebs Zelda’s frantically trying to jump up and comb out of his hair as they run. 

They round the corner into the backyard and—

Holy shit. Ragh knows chaos; he fuckin’ loves chaos. This is something else entirely, peak chaos as only the Bad Kids make it. And since when can everybody _fly_? 

It’s sunset, all the clouds lit up orange and no sun in his eyes when he looks up, which is very convenient because he has to crane his neck up (and up and up) to see where all the magic is coming from. It’s some kind of horrible, beautiful, magical firefight that he absolutely does _not_ want to get involved in. Thirty feet up, Ayda screeches and barrel rolls to dodge another guiding bolt that explodes into a shower of silver sparks against the trunk of some poor tree. Kristen is commanding a highkey badass sphere of—night?—and levitating, shooting towards Ayda with her heavy-looking staff outstretched. She’s on the attack, and this is exactly what Zelda needs, a distraction so big that a barbarian with two swords would be a blip on the radar next to everyone fighting out here. How Zelda’s going to get thirty feet up in the air is another problem, but as Tracker and Fig charge out of the woods—Tracker charging in a full wolf form, Fig skateboarding somehow across grass—Ragh shelves that question for later because _how many people are even out here_?

A spectral jeweled gauntlet is zooming through the air, joining Kristen in the fracas. “Ostentatia and Danielle are probably helping Kristen!” Zelda yells, “I think we want to be on Fig’s side!” Sure enough, Ragh watches as a little grey fox tears across the grass, trying to yank Fig’s skateboard out from under her. It’s kind of brutal to watch. Hey, Tracker the wolf and Willem the fox on the same side—it’s like a little kid’s book. Except for the magic and fighting to the death. 

“I think we want to be on Fig’s side” is good enough for Ragh, and—sorry Tracker, I’ll make it up to you in Fallinel—he grabs his glaive and charges in. 

Gods, is _everyone_ out here? He’s barely started running after Tracker when he looks over his shoulder and almost gets his nose taken off by a brambly green arrow that beats him there, thudding into Tracker’s shoulder and engulfing her in brambles that look a truly nasty amount of sharp. He has to check over his shoulder, but Zelda just whirls around from where she’s slashing at Danielle and gives him a thumbs up—looks like Antiope’s here too, and he’s not about to complain about her pinning Tracker to the ground helpfully for him. 

And where there’s Antiope, there’s going to be—is that Katja fucking throwing Zelda up to meet Kristen in midair? It looks like some kind of fancy maneuver they’ve practiced before, and Zelda’s a whirling mass of blades, tucking herself into a ball as she flies so she can grab onto Kristen’s legs at the peak of her arc and start grappling her. In fucking midair. If Ragh wasn’t so busy going to town on Tracker he’d have to give himself a second just to watch, because honestly, this is some beautiful fuckin’ stuff. 

Combat is a blur in the best kind of way. Kristen looks like she’s brought a whole army out here, three clerics and a druid absolutely going to town. Zelda gives it a good run, hanging on to Kristen’s ankles and getting some good scimitar slashes in at her before Ostentatia’s giant jeweled hand plucks her off. Ragh can’t keep track of alliances anymore, but Antiope keeps launching arrows at Tracker, and he lets her get in the final blow with a shortsword before Tracker groans and admits defeat just from sheer loss of HP. And Zelda’s landed on the ground again, but hey, he can probably do what Katja did. It only takes a little bit of confused gesturing before she tucks herself up into a ball and he cocks his arm back, launching her through the air in a helluva fastball special. Gorgug looks up from where he’s locked in a tug-of-war with his hoodie and Danielle’s fox, of all things, to just watch his girlfriend arc through the air to try to go for Kristen _again_ , his jaw hanging open.

Ragh’s worried he’s overstepped some kind of boundary until Gorgug just yells, “That was freaking awesome!” and Ragh shouts back, “Hoot! Growl! Hoot! Growl!” and it’s all chaos in the best possible way. 

Ayda holds her own, backed up by Fig’s bass boosted spells and the frankly unfair ability to just _fly_ , but eventually she’s just overpowered by how many spells are coming at her and it’s Danielle’s little fox that riffles through her pockets and steals her little piece of paper. The cleric army takes off into the woods victoriously (Kristen’s still flying, because she can. Ragh’s gotta admire the sense of style). He squints after them and he could swear that there’s not just a flying ribbon dancing girl, a starry wolf, and a half-elf druid but also a dwarf being carried by her own summoned jeweled gauntlet, a surprisingly competent little fox, and freaking ghostly bear. He was pretty focused on spotting Zelda so she didn’t fall out of the sky without someone to catch her, but what the _hell_ just happened here? 

He picks himself and also Zelda off the ground where they both got knocked, in one final attack by Ostentatia’s way-too-terrifying-for-how-glittery-it-is jeweled hand, to find Gorgug gently poking at a Fig-shaped mummified lump of vines wrapped around a tree. 

“I think this is Fig?” Gorgug looks puzzled, to say the least. After this battle, Ragh’s going to have to reassess this whole game, if Kristen’s got an army and managed to fend off Zelda dangling from her feet and slashing at her long enough to also kill Ayda. Zelda gently slices through the vines to reveal a spitting mad Fig, who immediately Burning Hands the offending weeds until they’re just ash around her feet the second her mouth is free. 

Ayda cracks her back and walks over to put an arm around her girlfriend. “I am dead, although I appreciate your valiant effort to defend me. Did you know Kristen could fly now?”

“No! Babe, look at this, what the _fuck_ , I was just—Danielle just stuck me to a fucking tree! And then I—“ Fig yanks what looks like a poison dart from the side of her neck, bent to the side from having been wrapped up in the vines with her. A little scroll unrolls from its shaft and helpfully reads, “You might not feel it, but there’s enough poison in here to be worth half your HP! Check your phone for who got you, because you’re super freaking dead (and I need the name of your target). Greater Restoration potions are in the fridge.” 

Fig hisses like a cat and Burning Hands the scroll until it’s just fluttering ash. And again for good measure.

“I know you killed me, but even I agree that’s super freaking harsh,” Ragh says.

“Don’t even _start_ with me Ragh Barkrock, I will kill you again!”

He just grins at her. “Whatever you want, little sis.” Fig snaps her teeth at the hand he reaches out to pat her on the head, but he knows she’s delighted—Fig’s been trying to get all the manorlings to call her their sister for months now. He’ll give her this one. She is, as the note says, super freaking dead.

“You do have to text in your death, my love,” Ayda points out, and it’s only because it’s Ayda that Ragh thinks she avoids getting teeth-snapped at too. Fig groans and pulls out her crystal (“well, at least we’re dead together, huh babe?”) and it reminds Ragh that his has been blowing up in his pocket for at least a couple of minutes now. 

_6:45pm_

**Tracker** : sorry it was kind of crazy so I didn’t text earlier, but i’m dead

 **Ayda** : I am also dead

 **Fig:** as it turns out I am also dead 

**Fabian:** holy fuck what happened out there

 **Ragh:** i was there and i don’t even know

 **Fig:** also my mom’s making dinner in 15, everyone’s welcome to stay, blah blah blah, we can say the kitchen and dining room’s a safe zone for eating? I promise i will not commit murder even if you killed me

 **Katja:** tell your mom thanks but i think antiope and i are just gonna head home and get back tomorrow, we kind of retreated into the woods and we’re already more than halfway home

 **Kristen:** fig that’s not how assassins works you’re already super dead you can’t kill people

 **Kristen:** danielle and ostentatia say they’re down for dinner though just give us a second we maybe got lost in the woods

 **Adaine:** kristen you have a whole druid with you

 **Tracker:** she means that when she stopped flying she tripped and fell in a bush and we’re working on getting her out. we’ll be there in 15

 **Adaine:** kristen stop texting while you’re stuck in a goddamn bush

Ragh looks at Zelda and Gorgug. “You guys can stay for dinner, right? Jawbone makes really good pulled pork.” He tries to be as spy-like as possible as he waits for Ayda and Fig to get far enough ahead of them before he adds, “Kristen’s super terrifying, I think we need to actually make a plan later tonight.” 

Gorgug nods at him seriously, and Zelda sheathes her swords and follows with minimal nervousness, for her. 

“By the way, the whole—” she gestures— “throwing-me-at-Kristen thing was really cool. I mean, when I do it with Katja it’s a whole maneuvering attack, like it’s something we practice as a party and a specific thing the fighter classes cover, but—”

“But when I just fastball special you at Kristen it still kind of works the same way without all the battlemaster crap?”

Zelda giggles up at him. “Haha, yeah, pretty much.” 

“Fuck yeah.” Ragh allows himself a fistpump. “I’m thinking we gotta do this more to really rub it in.”


	6. living room respite

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Antiope, Fabian, Kristen, Riz

* * *

_Gorgug—_

Fabian and some of the maidens head home after dinner, promising to return the next day but that they want a full night’s sleep in their own beds. It’s actually a pretty peaceful evening, for Mordred Manor. Everyone seems to get that trying to kill each other in the living room is a little gauche and will probably get them immediately killed by someone else in the complex system of Assassins alliances that Gorgug’s not even going to try to pretend to wrap his head around. No one whose name isn’t Riz Gukgak knows enough about the full loop of targets, so they’re all just cagey in a simmered-down way. Also, according to Fig, “It’s not even really Assassins if we just fight all the time! It’d be like. War. Let’s play some games!” She’s pulled out a battered set of Uno cards from somewhere to start a game that’s honestly getting more aggressive than most of the actual kills he’s seen today.

There haven’t been any kills here yet, so it looks like Fig’s plan is mostly working. Kristen and Tracker head outside for a bit and return an hour later without saying anything, but they slot back into the game easily. Honestly, Gorgug’s into this chill truce: they’ve all been sleeping with their weapons next to them for so long that it’s nice to be keeping watch while knowing that the worst possible scenario is their friends just bonking them on the head and stealing their paper. Also, it’s just hard to focus on things that aren’t Uno while playing Uno, because everyone is _very_ competitive and when Fig lays down about ten skips and two reverses at once, everyone launches into an uproar about Mordred’s bullshit house rules. 

And then they hear it coming: gravel crunching under tires, an infernal revving loud enough to break glass, and size five sneakers indignantly pounding up the driveway. The front door of Mordred Manor slams wide open, and framed in the doorway, Fabian Aramais Seacaster hollers, “KRISTEN FUCKING APPLEBEES, YOU WILL _PAY_ FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE THIS DAY!”

Kristen puts down a yellow three and half-turns around to raise her eyebrows at Fabian, who’s covered in glitter and also has the half-fading remains of some kind of purply aura around him, probably from whatever spell Kristen used to kill him. Or maybe just from a glitter bomb she used to add insult to injury—Kristen’s got a weird sense of humor, and Gorgug wouldn’t put it past her. She says, “You gotta text the kill in, dude,” and takes a long sip of her tomato juice.

Gorgug’s friends are little shits, and he loves them. 

“DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO GET GLITTER OUT OF MY HAIR, KRISTEN? IT’S IN MY _SOCKS_ ! AND SINCE WHEN CAN YOU _FLY_? WITH YOUR DANCE RIBBON?” Oh, she’s really let him get started. Over in the Uno corner, Aelwyn’s the only one still looking at her cards: Sam and Fig have both twisted around, watching this go down. Adaine’s prestidigitated up some popcorn—or did she just have that tucked away somewhere? Gorgug wants in if she did—and is eating it dramatically, one kernel at a time. 

“It was past sunset, it’s just a cleric thing,” Kristen says, and she’s pretty good at looking nonchalant but a shit-eating grin is starting to creep in at the sides of her mouth, tomato juice silly straw or no. 

“I CAN’T _BELIEVE_ THIS, KRISTEN _KILLED_ ME, I’M LETTING EVERYONE KNOW ABOUT THIS _INJUSTICE_ IN _PERSON_ SO WHY WOULD I NEED TO TEXT IT IN—”

Riz puts down the notebook where he’s probably been scheming and hops over to Fabian, deftly picking his pocket while he’s hollering.

_8:43pm_

**Fabian:** I can’t believe this, Kristen killed me, I’m letting everyone know in person about the injustice of being killed in assassins, a game about being killed, by yelling loudly enough that Riz had to take my crystal and text this in for me because I am still yelling.

Half of the crystals in the room chime loudly enough with the notification at the same time that it momentarily stops Fabian in his rant, confused. Riz clicks Fabian’s crystal off and tucks it back in his jacket pocket, tail swishing calmly side to side like this is perfectly normal behavior. 

_8:44pm_

**Katja:** you hate to see it

 **Kristen:** damn, seems real unfortunate for you

 **Katja:** my god now he’s been murdered twice

“The Ball, what are you— ow!” Fabian yelps as Riz brings his tail up to flick his nose gently. 

Kristen tosses Fabian a can of the pretentious seltzer that only the two of them like. “What can I say, I’m good at this game, have some Fantasy LaCroix and join us.” 

Riz clambers up onto Fabian’s shoulders. “He needs to mope, I’ll have him back in a few minutes.”

“ _You_ get me, The Ball,” Fabian grumbles, and he takes Riz with him out onto the porch. Gorgug looks over to see Zelda watching all of this curiously, and he just shrugs. That’s just Fabian and Riz. 

“I’ll go check on them,” Fig says, popping up from the floor, and there’s a general murmur of people deciding to take the opportunity to go refill drinks or grab more snacks or take a break from Fig systematically dominating at Uno. Zelda squeezes his hand and then disappears into the kitchen with Sam, and Gorgug grabs Ragh, because in all the distraction he hasn’t forgotten whose name is on the paper in his pocket and this is his opportunity to get _help_ from the only person here he can trust in this game. 

* * *

_Ragh—_

Taking advantage of all the chaos, Gorgug grabs his hand and drags him into the hallway. “Are you hurt?” Gorgug blurts.

“No, I’m—what? Nah, I’m fine, dude, but you’re looking hella stressed right now. Are _you_ hurt?” Words are spilling out, but Ragh’s only half paying attention to what he’s saying. Gorgug looks really concerned and Ragh’s busy scanning his face to figure out what the heck is going on. The hallway’s a little dark, light and noise spilling in from the living room. It’s the kind of shadowy just-past-sunset twilight that makes everything shadowy and interesting, Ragh’s nightvision just barely creeping in. Only half of Gorgug’s face is lit up, orange on his green skin. Gorgug looks. Nervous? Like he’s steeling himself to ask something?

Ragh grabs Gorgug’s shoulders like they’re in a little two-person bloodrush huddle. “Bro, I want you to know you can tell me anything. If you’re hurt, if you need me to fucking kill someone, if you ate too many steaks and you want a bathroom buddy, if you need an Owlbears three-way makeout—“

“Wait, what? What was that last one? Or honestly, those last three?”

Ragh honestly doesn’t remember what the last three things he offered were, and it’s Gorgug so he’s sure at least one of them was embarrassingly honest, so he just barrels onward. “—it doesn’t even fucking matter, I am _here_. For you.” Because he’s always here for Gorgug, and he doesn’t want to think about what Gorgug might be about to ask because he has a guess, or a hope really, but he really doesn’t want to be wrong. Or fuck this up. His hands are still on Gorgug’s shoulders. Is that weird? It’d be weirder to move them. Gorgug’s eyes are wide and a little panicked and have his eyelashes always been this long? 

“Um. Hoot growl, I’m not hurt, I. Ragh, I have a really big problem, I don’t know what to do, I need your help!”

Gorgug pulls his piece of paper out of his hoodie pocket, and, well, fuck him. It says Zelda Donovan. 

Ragh has to squint at it to make sure it’s real. He’s pretty sure it’s gotta be illegal to make Gorgug I-would-multiclass-into-artificer-for-my-girlfriend Thistlespring kill his girlfriend. Forget whatever Ragh thought was going on, this is clearly a top-priority crisis. He doesn’t know if Gorgug would be physically capable of attacking Zelda. Okay, this wasn’t what he was expecting Gorgug to ask, but still? If possible, Gorgug being so stressed about this is even more cute. What the fuck. Okay. 

“I swear on the crown of the fuckin’ crab king, I will help you not have to kill your girlfriend, dude,” Ragh says, grabbing Gorgug’s shoulders again. Gorgug visibly exhales, so relieved that he looks like he’s been holding tension for a while. “We’re gonna make plans. We’re gonna run interference. We’re gonna become, like, the fucking champions of helping your girlfriend mow down so many people she’s not even going to _notice_.” 

“Hoot growl?”

“You bet your _ass_ hoot growl.”

* * *

_Gorgug—_

Gorgug just barely gets back to the living room with Ragh, trying to hide whatever his face is doing behind a can of soda that he is definitely not slowly crushing out of tenseness, when Zelda scoots over to him and gently headbutts him in the side as a greeting.

“Soooo, what were you talking about with Ragh, like, did you ask him out yet?” 

He fervently shoves his piece of paper deeper inside his hoodie pocket like she’s going to pick his pocket and find out his secret. 

Screaming. Inside, he’s screaming. Gorgug’s not going to survive this game.


	7. sleepover strategizing

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Antiope, Kristen, Riz

* * *

_Ragh—_

Ragh hasn’t even been living in Mordred that long, but _man_ is he gonna miss this place when he and Tracker head off for Fallinel. For one thing, it’s _made_ for sleepovers. It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Riz to admit he’s already set up a war room and that everyone living in the manor is totally okay with letting him just camp out there or on the couch instead of going home all the way to Ballaster. 

Gorgug accepts Ragh’s offer to camp out on his floor and share the safe zone so they can get more sleep (important for game days!) and plan their next day’s kills almost before he asks, and Zelda’s already been offered a toothbrush from Fig by the time he asks her. 

Before Zelda even really agreed to stay over, Ragh was pulling comforters out of one of the several sleepover stockpiles, all full of extra pillows and blankets and spare toothbrushes. 

And he, like, has a bed right there, but he can take one day of sleeping on the floor if it’s where his bros are too. 

They call a war council. Well, Gorgug calls a war council, but Ragh can tell he’s already fading. His voice comes from somewhere in the middle of a mess of hoodie he’s pulling over his head when he offers, “We can like. Sneak up on Kristen ’n the morning?” He emerges from it with his hair _everywhere_ and aiming wide black eyes at Ragh that Ragh knows probably means something like _, please help me convince Zelda we need to go after the person who she has to kill who is Kristen, definitely Kristen and definitely not the person who I have to kill who is Zelda because I’m Gorgug Thistlespring and I’m the last person in the world who would attack my girlfriend ever._

And, like, anything for his best bro. “That’s actually like a super good plan dude? Because there’s this secret passage that I know that opens right in front of Kristen’s whole chapel deal, so that could be like, uh—” Ragh runs out of steam— “like a place where we could sneak up on Kristen. In the morning.” 

Gorgug shoots him a grateful look and nods furiously, and Zelda props her chin on one hand and leans in. 

And then they all sit for a second in silence, mental wheels spinning because this isn’t really their forte. 

It’s Gorgug’s turn to save them when he awkwardly shuffles his hands in his hoodie pocket and says, “I could maybe use some spells? I don’t know, to like get her out of her room and into the hall so you—“ he makes a little head bob towards Zelda— “could probably do enough damage?”

Spells, right. Zelda starts running through a list of possible things they could do and Gorgug starts interjecting with a much shorter list of what he could use spells for. To Ragh it seems like they’ve mostly got this covered, a quiet back-and-forth between them, and he’s just the muscle here, so he lets himself just listen while they chat easily. 

Sometimes he forgets that Gorgug has spells now, but he’s cute when he’s this kind of focused in, fiddling with his multitool instead of his hoodie strings as he flicks the attachments in and out. Zelda talks with her hands way more than she talks out loud, and Ragh watches Gorgug’s eyes flick carefully side to side watching her gestures as he listens. There’s a little wrinkle between his void-black eyes that Ragh wants to gently poke to see if it’d smooth out. 

He sits on his hands so he doesn’t do something ham-fisted and stupid with them. 

Zelda claps her hands together gently (inside her hoodie pocket, weirdly, so it’s muffled). “That works!” she says, and Ragh shakes himself out of whatever his brain was doing. 

“Sounds good,” Gorgug says, and Ragh finds himself nodding along too. He’ll figure it out in the morning. 

Gorgug nods back solemnly, and then makes a damn cute noise as he pulls the blankets up to his nose, and then immediately falls asleep. 

Strategy is not any of their strong suit, but it’ll probably be fine.

* * *

Gorgug sleeps like a rock, but Ragh finds himself drifting awake and then just lying there with eyes opened for long enough that he finally decides to get up and go to the bathroom. He has to pick his way across a mess of people and blankets and a pillow that’s wound up a solid five feet from anyone who could potentially be using it for anything, but he never remembered to turn out the last dim light and he avoids crushing anything actually important.

When he gets back, Zelda’s sitting up too, earbuds in and combing one hand idly through a still-sleeping Gorgug’s hair. “Couldn’t sleep either?” he says as softly as he can, not wanting to break the quiet of whatever’s happening here. 

Gorgug’s really goddamn cute, Ragh doesn’t think, pillow-mussed hair and hoodie balled up under his head and t-shirt rucked up just the little bit. He doesn’t. It’s really goddamn cute, Ragh does think, in that they’re really cute together and he’d never break this up and so he’s going to get himself together and get over it. And he’s not lying to himself, it’s just that. Maybe both things are true. 

Zelda jumps a little but doesn’t stop when she hears him. Which is something Ragh lets himself be proud of—he knows he’s a scary guy and he knows Zelda is a little shy, at least when she’s not leaping around slicing people up with twin scimitars.

“Yeah, I don’t know why this one is so much more wiped than us when we’ve been doing the exact same stuff all day,” Zelda says.

“He’s the nerd of us three, maybe that’s why, got all the spells and shit.” It makes Zelda snort-laugh a little bit and that makes Ragh really pleased, actually. Zelda’s really cool and Ragh really hopes they can count as friends, after this game. 

He tries and fails to walk quietly around the mess on the floor so he doesn’t step on anyone in the dark. After a lot of trying to lower and slide himself between the blankets he finally manages to maneuver himself back in, and then it’s him who jumps this time when Zelda leans over Gorgug and pokes his arm gently.

She ties a knot and then she must have finished the rest of the bracelet while he was in the bathroom because because sitting in her hand is something that looks knotted together like, really nice. It’s got little waves that look kind of square and a bunch of different colors and shit. 

“Oh, uh, that was really dumb of me, like, I guess I should have asked you if that’s even your flag first.” Zelda says, doing the thing that Gorgug does a lot, where she reaches for her hoodie string and puts it in her mouth nervously. Ragh wonders if she’s ever eaten a whole hoodie before, because that seems like the kind of thing Zelda might do. And then he actually processes what she just said.

“For me?”

It’s pride flag colors, which, like, maybe he should have figured it out from the colors, but it’s. Really fucking cool. 

Ragh’s chest feels kind of tight: he’s been out and proud for a while, but it’s still nice. 

He wasn’t, like, super paying attention to what she was doing while they were all talking in the living room earlier. Something with a lot of strings tied to her water bottle, like something she can fidget with? But he’d never have assumed it was gonna be for him while she was tying all those knots. His room is still only lit by one super dim lamp and his darkvision creeping in makes the colors a little fuzzy, but it looks really hard to make and it’s just really fucking sweet. 

His dumb hindbrain says, _Gorgug deserves someone as sweet as her._ His dumb hindbrain says, _do you think she’d be so nice if she knew you’ve been trying to get over her boyfriend for more than a year?_

He tells the voice in his head (it sounds like him when he lets the rage use him instead of him using it. It sounds a little like Dayne, too) to shut up, Zelda’s a cooler person than he deserves to count as a friend and he’s going to let himself enjoy that. Being friends with Gorgug, making friends with his extremely badass girlfriend. Getting to run around and wallop their friends with scimitars and glaives and greataxes and fastball specials from the roof of a three story manor. 

If he’d told Ragh-from-two-years-ago that this is what the summer after his senior year was going to look like, he wouldn’t have believed it. (And also would have probably yelled something like “ _who are you and what kind of wizard time magic did you use, get the fuck out of my house, is this a fucking prank_?”) So this is already so much, and he’s not going to wish for more. He’s not. He has a lot to be happy about and he’s going to be, goddamnit. 

He puts it on immediately, even though it takes some fumbling with it around his wrist before he manages to loop the string through and tie a knot. He’s pretty sure he’s never in a million fucking years going to take this off. 

“No, yeah dude, I’m gay, I’m really fucking gay,” Ragh laughs. He turns his hand over to look at the pattern as it goes all the way around his wrist, which. He doesn’t know the first thing about weaving, or like making things in general, but it looks hard. “This is fuckin’ top shelf, man!” 

“Oh, I’m, like, super glad you like it,” Zelda says, softly clapping her hands together. “And, um, all three of us can match, kind of! Like for our team.” Sure enough, she holds up a wrist and she’s got one too. It’s the same pattern of weaving or knots or whatever in blue and purple and pink, a little ratty like she’s been wearing it for a while, like it’s comfortable. 

All three of us? His brain processes that a second later and he looks over and, right, Gorgug’s got a slightly less ratty bi flag one too, on his wrist where he’s thrown his arm over solidly into Zelda’s space. Because Gorgug sleeps like he’s one big half-orc starfish, or maybe some kind of octopus. Something big and grabby but sort of cute. 

He’s in so deep and he’s not thinking about it, he’s definitely not. Only octopuses on the brain right now and absolutely nothing else. 

Somehow it’s something Ragh hadn’t found out during spring break, probably because Tracker’s moon haven gave everyone their own little pockets. Or maybe because the Bad Kids are all smaller than Gorgug and like to sleep with him at the bottom of a cuddle pile, probably too weighed down to flail much. Ragh’s starting to understand how breaking his bed became a normal thing.

Ragh would never call himself the most observant guy, but somehow he’s still surprised that the fact that Gorgug proudly wears a bi pride bracelet escaped him too. 

It’s not that he didn’t know Gorgug’s bi, or at least isn’t totally opposed to liking guys—Gorgug kissed him last year, after all, and he goes with the rest of the Bad Kids to Kristen’s LGBTQ union meetings, and he drove them to Bastion City pride earlier this summer. 

But Ragh was always telling himself maybe he just went to meetings for his friends, and maybe going to pride was just because he’s the only one who has the Hangvan that can hold everyone, and maybe he just kissed Ragh to be nice.

You know, like a friend. Like friends do.

Gorgug’s a really good friend, his best bro, and Ragh shouldn’t want more than this but he still does.

It’s like a reminder that he could have this, that Gorgug could possibly like him back in some other version of this world that feels tantalizingly close but agonizingly far away at the same time. A timeline that’s not this one, because in this one Gorgug’s dating Zelda and he deserves to be happy. 

Ragh might be just a little bit in denial about whether he’s succeeding on getting over this crush, but he’s certain that in any timeline, Gorgug just deserves to be happy. He’s just so full of light and so full of love, throwing those gangly arms around his friends for easy hugs and ducking his head down to accept pecks on the cheek from Zelda and raising his gigantic axe over his head and yelling with pure glee when he does something he thinks is badass, and that’s all Ragh ever wants for him. He’s not even jealous—he’d have to have a rock-bottom intelligence score to not know better than to wish anything bad on Zelda, who makes Gorgug happy and who could also take him apart with the deadliest swords Ragh’s ever seen wielded by such a tiny person. 

He looks up and remembers, right, he’s been lost in his own thick skull while Zelda nibbles on a hoodie string and looks at him from under her hood. 

“The, uh. The fastball special we did earlier today was pretty cool,” he offers, miming “throwing a satyr girl into the sky for tactical advantage” as best he can without slamming his whole arm backwards into the wall. 

Zelda’s eyes light up and she nods, laughing a little. “Three stories!”

“Real talk, bro? If you hadn’t asked me to do it I would’ve thought I fuckin’ killed you or something, that was some crazy shit you did there.”

“Okay, wait,” Zelda says, “I actually, like, super didn’t know that would work? I just figured your guys’ whole thing is like. Throwing things, because bloodrush, there’s no one in my party who really does that.”

Ragh is constantly reorienting the image of Zelda he has in his head, because he’s a horrifying mix of impressed and gobsmacked at the same time. This little satyr girl is terrifying, because anyone who just walks up and asks to be hurled at the sky with no idea if it’ll work has more balls than anyone else he knows.

“Gods.” He’s processing. Zelda is not to be messed with. Maybe she actually will win this thing. “Okay, sure, jeez. I mean, Katja could probably throw you like that, she’s got pretty good strength, right? Like, even without the battlemaster stuff?” Ragh tries to say this as nonchalantly as possible, but—

Zelda tips her head to the side. “I thought she said she’d beaten you at the county fair arm-wrestling championships three years in a row?”

“Pshh- I mean- we don’t _talk_ about that, okay, arm wrestling is an imperfect test of strength!” Ragh sputters. But Zelda just sticks her tongue out at him and shrugs and. Man. Gorgug’s gotta be the sweet one in this relationship, because his girlfriend is terrifying. 

Zelda just keeps going, saying, “I mean, I keep telling her to take barbarian levels, but—”

“Oh, yeah, fuckin’ _tell me about it_ , but no, she just wants to keep using a greataxe and being confused for a barbarian but not having to deal with Porter’s classes.”

Zelda shakes her head. “That’s what I’m saying! But she just doesn’t get _mad_ , _ever_ , I don’t know how she does it. Maybe we can teach her to do the throwing-me-at-enemies thing, though, the way you do it without any of the battlemaster.”

Ragh lounges back so he’s just holding himself up on his elbows, drawling out his words because he’s just the right amount of sleepover sleepy now. “Nah, man, you gotta save that for us. That’s a barbarian special, you have to bring me on all your quests now so you can do that.” 

Zelda giggles, a little thing that makes her nose twitch. “Hah, yeah, for sure. Antiope’s car doesn’t fit more than seven people, though, so, like—”

“Just, like, strap me on the roof, man,” Ragh says, grinning wide, and it sets Zelda off, doubling over with little giggles. “You gotta bring me, that’s what I’m saying! We gotta have me, I’m gonna get _so_ good at this I’m gonna beat Katja in the throwing-Zelda-at-people championships in next year’s fair.” He whips around to point a finger at her. “And you gotta be the champion of getting thrown at people, because that whole battle dance jumpy thing you do, I’ve never seen that before and it looks lethal as _hell_. Is it like a set play, in bloodrush? Or do you kind of just make up the steps as you go?”

“I could, um. I could show you some steps, sometime? It’s like a whole family tradition thing, and some of them you probably can’t do because you don’t have goat legs, but like.” 

Ragh would start jumping around the room _now_ if it wouldn’t probably end up with him accidentally stepping on Gorgug. Yes, yes, absolutely he wants to learn about barbarian things from someone who does barbarian things a totally different way from he’s ever seen anyone else do it. And better, too. 

They fist-bump on it, which is as good as a magical contract in Ragh’s book, and then Zelda gets a little more serious. “I’m sorry you got taken out so early, like, I hope it’s not super weird you’re kind of just tagging along and, I don’t know, doing a lot more support stuff. I’m sure you’re really good at your own barbarian stuff.”

Ragh props himself up on one elbow and gives it a second—he hadn’t even really thought about it that way. “Nah, like. Thanks and all, super ‘preciate that. I don’t know, there have been some times like— Or, wait, you guys had the livestream going, right? You saw— we fought the Nightmare King.” _Gorgug fought the Nightmare King_ , he doesn’t say, _and he made it through the forest but I didn’t, and instead I was fighting him. And I was like a weapon and I had to fight my friends and I don’t remember all of it but I remember my glaive, and their scared eyes, and what it feels like when your body isn’t yours. What it feels like when you snap out of it and there’s blood on your hands and you don’t know whose. What it feels like when you snap out but your body’s still not doing what you want it to because you’re tired to the bone, more tired than rage._ What he says is, “You probably saw, like, I had to fight against the party, and I don’t really remember all of it but it really sucked. So I honestly wasn’t super looking forward to the like, hitting you guys with blades part of this game. The spy stuff is way more fun.” He exhales, longer than he thought he needed _._ When he looks over, realizing how long he’s talked, Zelda isn’t looking at him with confusion or blankness or pity. She reaches over to pat his hand, a little awkwardly because she’s barely got enough reach to be able to touch him over the sprawled-out giant that is Gorgug. 

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Zelda just says. It’s not that many words, and Ragh’s surprised that it makes him feel quite as grateful as he does. 

Ragh exhales again, long and loud. “Spring break, huh?” he says, unable to help it being a little wry. And then he remembers Katja saying that Aguefort sent the Maidens out into dragon territory, and, right, that sounds like it would suck too.

“Spring break,” Zelda says, dry as a desert, and she twists her mouth a little in agreement. “Yeah, ours too, it ended up going okay but.” Their party hadn’t done any livestreams, but Ragh thinks about the way Gorgug kept trying to call Zelda, thinks about the weird thing that Gorgug skipped a Mordred Manor barbeque for that ended up with feathers all over his axe, thinks about what it would be like to fight a dragon if one almost ritually sacrificed you a year before. Absolutely fuck all of that, thank you very much. “It ended up okay, I guess,” Zelda restarts, “but I’m sorry, I get that about spring break being. Kind of rough. You’re super strong, I’m sure you’d be great at it, but. I don’t know, I guess I get it.” 

Ragh props himself up on one elbow, checks to make sure Gorgug’s really asleep. Maybe what he wants to say feels a little reckless, but he’s a barbarian and that’s his whole life. 

“He was so happy when you called, like, I don’t really know anything about this, but he’s a great guy,” he offers. “Or like, shit, obviously, you probably know that.”

Zelda shrugs. “It’s still, um, it’s nice hearing it from you, like, you’re his best friend,” she says. 

For a second Ragh thinks, _you mean Fig?_ But this is Zelda, who spends so much time with Gorgug that they walk to school together every single day, so. Maybe it’s that they just practice sparring together, with Zelda, so she thinks about that more. Or the way that they immediately made an alliance for Assassins, but that’s really because everyone else seemed to have a plan and the low-insight folks have to stick together. Or the way that Gorgug tried so hard to make sure Ragh still got to be on their team, after he got fucking merced. 

Phew. Ragh has. A lot to think about. 

* * *

_Zelda—_

She says, “You’re his best friend” and puts a hoodie string in her mouth before she blurts anything else out because what she wants to say is, _he has a crush on you bigger than a signal pyre, I can’t believe you haven’t noticed, and the longer I talk with you the more I think you like him back and_ he _hasn’t noticed, is it true?_

What she wants to say is, _I promise you Gorgug has so much love to give and you’d make him really happy. I can’t believe I’m apparently the least shy one in this room because I think both of you are being too polite and respectful to actually ask each other, but I’m rooting for both of you so hard._

What she actually says is nothing, because she’s not super great with words, but at least Ragh doesn’t seem to be looking for her to talk. Instead, he just squeezes his plastic water bottle super loudly, takes a swig, and, apparently satisfied, rolls over and goes to sleep.

Zelda stays up for a bit, though. She’s done with the bracelet she was working on, but she can put her mind to weaving together a plan, instead. It’s not that she didn’t mean what she said to Gorgug—she’s not going to speak for him, not going to push him harder than he wants. She loves him too much for that, and respects him too much for that. But still, part of her just wants to gently ram these two together until they figure their stuff out.

Short of that, though, she does have a plan for tomorrow that she can work with. 


	8. chapel carnage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for canon-typical food crimes (magic using food as a material component)

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Antiope, Kristen, Riz

* * *

_Gorgug—_

First thing in the morning, they find themselves trying to squish two six-foot-plus half-orcs and a very large, very crinkly family sized bag of pork rinds into a cupboard as quietly as possible. 

Gorgug can’t even imagine how Ragh discovered this, but one of Mordred’s many secret passages starts in the back of the pantry and snakes through the bowels of the manor to end up in the back of a wardrobe in a little vestibule right outside the door of Kristen’s chapel. According to the extremely malleable rules of Bad Kids assassins, this doesn’t count as being _in_ Kristen’s safe zone. So they’re allowed to set up an ambush there, or at least Gorgug thinks so. 

It does feel a little like getting ready for an early morning scrimmage, waking up early and then swinging by the kitchen to swipe some orange juice and the pork rinds he needs for the plan before ducking into the secret passage with Ragh and hunkering down to wait for Kristen to emerge from the safety of her room. Gorgug’s trying to bounce up and down on his toes as quietly as possible, nibbling on the strings of his hoodie. He’s gotta be able to cast a spell for all this to work, and he’s a little nervous but also kind of excited. To get to do some magic! For Zelda, really, since they’re trying to help her kill Kristen, but also to show off just a little. For Ragh. 

Zelda said they were changing some plans around, so instead of him and Zelda in the cupboard to attack right away and Ragh in the hall to prevent Kristen from escaping, now it’s Gorgug and Ragh in the cupboard, and Zelda’s going to be outside to intercept Kristen. Something about needing Ragh to be in there with Gorgug because he’s their expert to deal with Tracker, who Zelda has decided is a threat they should worry more about. There was more of an explanation she’d been muttering quietly, like she had to convince him that the new plan was a good idea, when Gorgug’s perfectly willing to go with whatever Zelda decides.

He fidgets a little with the paper that’s still got Zelda’s name on it that he’s still hiding deep inside his hoodie pocket, the safest place he knows. The harder they’re going after Kristen, the less Zelda’s asking questions about who Gorgug’s target is. 

When this plan goes off, Gorgug’s going to cast his spell, and Ragh’s going to try to grapple Tracker so she can’t go all wolf on them. Zelda’s waiting just outside, if these first stages go well, and right now it’s just Gorgug and Ragh crouching in the back of the wardrobe. At least it’s a little more space than a cupboard that didn’t have a secret passage in the back, but a part of Gorgug (one that’s maybe bigger than he’d like to admit) doesn’t necessarily mind being squished in here with him. 

Ragh got a new friendship bracelet, too, one that Zelda made with the knotting-weaving thing she does that matches all the rugs and wall hangings in her family’s house. It made Gorgug immediately push up his sweatshirt sleeve to show off his own matching one and make Ragh light up the room—the cupboard—with his excited grin. Gorgug doesn’t think he’s the kind of person to be loud every day like Kristen is, like Ragh is. Still, he’ll wear his own gift from Zelda with pride, even if it’s under a sweatshirt cuff, and he’s also just really happy that Zelda and Ragh are good enough friends that Ragh has a matching one to go with the two of theirs. 

Ragh’s taking watch, peeking through the crack between the doors, and one beam of rainbow stained-glass light from the chapel is lighting up his face. It cuts across his forehead, taking a hard right as it crosses over his nose and casts this angular shadow that makes all the planes of his face look more dramatic. Gorgug’s trying not to stare, but he can’t help it. Rainbow just looks good on Ragh. 

He tries not to think about how easy it’d be, in this calm before the attack, in the dark where it’s just the two of them, to maybe say how he feels. It wouldn’t even be that many words, if he could just—

“You know I love you, dude,” Ragh starts, and Gorgug freezes for a different reason. But Ragh just kinda bounces his knee and continues, “but I gotta ask, what’s with the pork rinds?” He jabs a thumb towards the bag and the plastic crinkles painfully loudly. Oh. Well, Gorgug can talk about that, at least, even if they’re not the words he actually wants to be saying. The shrug he wants to do is hard to get across in the dark in a cramped passageway, but then Gorgug realizes he can just—

 _I need it for the spell, but I don’t really know why?_ he Messages, and Ragh jumps at hearing Gorgug’s voice in his head. Gorgug points at him again and recasts it, rolling a little piece of copper wire between his fingers. _If I point at you, you can Message me back_ , he explains, and Ragh nods excitedly.

_Holy shit! Did that work?_

Gorgug’s not actually sure if Ragh needs to do the pointing-at-him-back part, but even just looking at him sidelong with darkvision in a cupboard secret passage he can tell Ragh’s delighted. His eyes light up and his smile’s stained rainbow from the vestibule’s glass and he’s just really nice to look at. It’s contagious, making Gorgug bounce on the balls of his feet and grin right back. He likes making Ragh smile. 

_Ayda said not to read wizard books and I don’t know if that means I can’t read artificer books so I don’t really know why I need the snacks, but they help the spell I think. I have to throw the pork rinds on the ground and then I can cast the spell._

_That’s so fucking cool. Dude, what the fuck!_

Gorgug grins and then gets an idea. _Just watch this_ , he says, and he envisions where Zelda is, waiting right outside this room down the hall in a little nook, and points that way, then back at Ragh. _Message group chat?_

He can picture Zelda doing the little surprised squeak she often makes before she says back, _Message group chat! This is a super good idea, Gorgug!_ And he doesn’t have to picture the raised eyebrows on Ragh’s face when he realizes he can hear Zelda in his head.

 _They haven’t come out yet, Zelda_ , Ragh reports seriously, _But we’re all good in here, should be soon. Are you ready?_

Ragh’s got his eye on the crack in the cupboard doors, so Gorgug can take his focus off it a little to just be pointing back and forth between his teammates (crushes) (partners, maybe). He’s like a magical cell tower for Messages. 

_Born ready!_ Zelda tells them, and Ragh grins. 

_Hell yeah hoot growl! Gorgug, you’re fucking_ magical _, man, this is so fucking cool!_

Zelda’s voice comes into just Gorgug’s head, and he jerks his hand back before he accidentally points and sends it on to Ragh. _Hmmmm_ , Zelda teases, _looks like_ someone _thinks that you casting spells is super fucking cool._

He can’t hear it with this spell, but Gorgug just knows that she’s got a shit-eating grin on right now. He wants to put his head in his hands again, but Ragh would see it and ask what’s wrong.

_Gorgug! Ask him, he thinks you’re magic and cool!_

_I’m not messaging him that!_ Gorgug yelps. _Did you stick us in here together on purpose?_ Ragh gives him a weird look, probably because he’s seeing Gorgug mouth words but not hearing them in his own head. _You’ve got some more time on this stakeout, or whatever, I’m just saying, it could be kind of hot_ , Zelda says in his head, and he can hear her smile in the words. 

_I’m not asking him out inside a_ closet _, Zelda!_ Gorgug sputters like he wasn’t maybe considering doing just that just a few minutes ago, rustling around to pull his hood up over his head and thanking the gods that Ragh’s darkvision doesn’t have enough color for him to see the way Gorgug’s definitely blushing. _She’s teasing me about flexing that I have spells and you guys don’t_ , he tries to message Ragh by way of explanation. It’s not 100% correct, but good enough.

Ragh frowns like he’s about to say something back, but then they both freeze at the sound of the door to the chapel creaking open outside their closet.

It’s Kristen, yawning and opening the door with her back as she keeps talking.

“Babe, you wanna get some oatmeal and then—”

BAM! Ragh slams the closet doors open with his shoulders as he leaps from his crouch, and all of the stained glass light floods Gorgug’s vision. He just gets a glimpse of Tracker and Kristen’s jaws dropping in hilariously synchronized slow motion as two boys and a bag of pork rinds _explode_ out of the closet. 

When he lifts his axe, it slices through the chip bag like it’s nothing. Chicharrones go flying, skittering across the floor, a hail of deep-fried grapeshot. 

“Hoot! Growl! Hoot! Growl!” Ragh goes right for Tracker like they planned, grabbing her legs even as she starts shifting into wolf form and slinging her over his shoulder like she’s a sack of flour and not an extremely formidable cleric. 

Kristen sputters, “Gorgug, what the—” Gorgug feels a _little_ bad as he leaps and makes a diving tackle to yank Kristen’s ankles out from under her, but he can’t help but grin as he whips out with his multitool in one hand and the pork rinds suddenly carpet the whole floor and part of the hall outside with slick magical grease. 

“You _fucker_ ,” Kristen shrieks, and she can’t do anything but flip Gorgug off with both hands as she spectacularly fails a dex save in the grease and lands on her ass on the floor, flail-sliding the direction he tackled her. He’s laughing and her hands scrabble against greasy flagstone floor without a chance of gripping on (too bad that Kristen’s got no claws and shit dex), and their plan goes off perfectly. Ragh turns from tussling with Tracker to hurl a perfectly timed hand axe, it slams the door to the hallway wide open, Kristen slides right out the door, and three feet down the hall Zelda just _charges_ , no swords and just her horns, tackling their cleric right as she skids by. 

It’s absolute madness in the hallways at nine AM, just like they planned it, and it’s kind of beautiful. 

Ragh’s got Tracker covered in here, and Gorgug basically made himself a greasy magical slip-and-slide, so he dives down the hall after Zelda and Kristen. Kristen didn’t drop the Staff of Doubt, but Zelda’s hanging on, sliding on residual grease and momentum as they tussle all the way down the hall.

Gorgug’s dex isn’t nearly as as bad as Kristen’s, but he still has to make his way slower than usual when the grease dissipates and he trots down the hall, looking for whichever side passage Zelda tackled Kristen into. By the time he gets there, his girlfriend is standing holding both her swords to Kristen’s chest and holding Kristen’s little piece of paper triumphantly as Kristen rolls her eyes good-naturedly and takes out her phone to text in her own death.

Zelda looks delightedly triumphant and Gorgug can’t help but try to drop a kiss on the top of her head as he comes up behind her. Well, he tries, because his girlfriend immediately whirls around and narrowly misses slicing his arm off with a three-foot-long blade. 

She ducks her head apologetically and lowers her sword, smiling a little at him, but then pokes Gorgug in the side until he gets her drift. He has to fumble around in his pocket to find his wire again, but the hoodie also helps hide the way he points when he Messages her. 

_Well? Did you ask him?_

Gorgug tries to shoot his girlfriend a dirty look without Kristen seeing. _I was thinking about it,_ before _you asked me, you know. But then Kristen and Tracker came out._ He chews on his lip, a little disappointed in himself. _I’m working on it, I can’t believe you planned to stick us in a closet together though._

_You’re gonna find the right time, I didn’t mean to push too hard._

_He’s just. I don’t know. The push is good, I’m just._ He doesn’t really know where he’s going with this and just kind of flails his hands around, because that’s kind of how he’s feeling. 

At least Zelda gets when he’s having a crisis, though, and she gives him a little sympathetic look under the guise of sheathing both her swords. _He’d be good for you and you’d be good for him,_ she smiles, _I believe in you_.

Gorgug finishes the _spring break_ just in his own head as Kristen finishes sending her text and looks up in time to see Ragh picking his way through the now-disappearing grease on the hallway floor. A still-wolfish Tracker is looped around his shoulders like she’s a baby sheep and not a full werewolf. She’s half-jokingly snapping her jaw at Ragh’s head but has mostly gone floppy in surrender. 

“Nice spell, Thistlespring,” Kristen says, taking Gorgug’s offered hand to help her up. 

He shrugs a little shyly, shifting his little multitool to his hoodie pocket. “Nice plan, Donovan,” he deflects, nudging Zelda.

And Zelda, to his surprise, offers a fistbump to Ragh standing next to them, who takes one hand off hanging on to Tracker to accept. “Nice stakeout, Barkrock.” 

Kristen watches them and shrugs. “I never get to see Gorgug do magic, I can’t even be mad you guys used it to kill me. We had a good run.” She pokes Ragh in the bicep. “Can you put my girlfriend down and then you guys want some oatmeal for breakfast?”

Ragh looks at Zelda before he sets Tracker down, actually, which really shouldn’t be as surprising to Gorgug as it is. He’s never really gotten to watch them be friends before, and it’s fun to see Zelda taking the lead. 

Zelda sheathes both her swords. “Oatmeal’d be super great, but maybe we’ll take it to go?” she says apologetically. “I think we’ve still got some people to kill.” 

_10:03am_

**Kristen:** another one bites the dust it’s me i’m biting so much dust right now

 **Tracker:** babe that’s so gross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the material component for Grease in 5e can be either butter or for some godforsaken reason, "a bit of pork rind." And you know these boys were going to go get a bag of fried chicharrones.


	9. melee montage

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Antiope, Riz

* * *

_Ragh—_

“We should go search the woods! Antiope’s definitely hiding out there and I can talk to some animals to figure out where she is, I want to beat my mom in melee combat!” Zelda’s hyper from their victory and also from Kristen’s generous scoops brown sugar in the oatmeal, because she’s hopping from foot to foot on the roof and nibbling on the paper cup the oatmeal came in. And the plastic spoon. And Gorgug’s spoon, which he hands her without her needing to ask. 

“You can what? Also, why is Antiope your mom?” There’s just a lot going on and it makes Ragh feel tired just trying to follow along. He needs more of that orange juice-coffee he made yesterday. 

Zelda giggles. “She’s not my _mom_ mom, she’s just my Maidens mom! It’s because I was a freshman when most of them were seniors, it’s a thing we do. Like because I’m the little one in the party, and she teaches me things a lot.” This is making Ragh’s head hurt. “It’s just kind of a joke, lol.” He looks at Gorgug, who just shakes his head in a sympathetic I’ve-been-dating-Zelda-for-a-year-and-I-still-don’t-get-it-just-go-with-it way. 

“It’s actually super fun, like, we’re just really close.” Zelda pats Ragh on the shoulder. “Sorry if that’s super weird, haha.”

Ragh tips his head to the side, thinking hard. “Should we have Maidens moms? Or like parents, for the Bad Kids? I just graduated, am I the Bad Kids dad?” 

Gorgug looks distressed. “Oh gods. Maybe no Bad Kids dads.” 

“So Antiope is like. Your mom but not actually your mom.”

“Yep!”

“And you want to kill your mom because—“

“It’s like a trial by combat thing, she’ll be so proud of me! And also, like, I said we’re going to win this thing, we gotta keep going!” Zelda smiles angelically and starts sharpening her swords. 

Ragh likes this bloodthirsty little satyr girl. He’s also just really glad he doesn’t have to be on the other side of this 

“Fuck yeah, dude, let’s kill your ranger? I guess?” Ragh finishes his second cup of oatmeal. “Hey, do you want the cup? I don’t really eat them, so like.” 

Zelda _beams_ at him. Fuck yeah, they’re doing this. 

* * *

They’re on the edge of the woods figuring out exactly what they want to do and Gorgug reaches into his backpack to pull out— 

“Bro, what the fuck, your parents gave you _what_?”

“Oh, uh, it’s not a big deal, I just told them we were playing assassins so they let me pick out some stuff from the bomb chest—”

“ _Bomb chest_?” 

Ragh’s voice is rising by the second, and Zelda can’t blame him. Sometimes her boyfriend just _does_ this, pulling out newly acquired drumset proficiencies or an entire level of artificer or apparently a handful of firebombs that his family just has. And then shrugs his shoulders and ducks his head like it’s something to be ashamed of, when it’s _awesome_. Her boyfriend is awesome, and he’s offering them—offering her—adventuring-grade explosives just so they can go fuck around in the woods and blow Antiope’s hideout to high heaven. Because that’s the way this relationship works. Zelda can’t help it, she has to bounce up on the tips of her hooves to push his hood back a little and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“What did I do?” Gorgug asks, puzzled. 

Ragh makes eye contact with Zelda, and they’re both thinking _this boy._

“Those are just, um, really cool, it’s a super good idea,” Zelda looks up into his face to tell him with a smile. 

“Oh. Cool. So we could just, like. Throw all of the bombs at them, that’s probably enough damage to count as a kill?” He’s cute when he’s thoughtful. He’s also cute when he’s figuring out how to deliver their friends a thorough whomping. Zelda tries to focus.

The plan is crude, but effective.

Sounds pretty perfect for a team of three barbarians. 

* * *

_Zelda—_

“GO GO GO GO GO!” Gorgug yells, all his teeth bared and his arms pumping as they sprint away from a super huge explosion, flaming tree branches falling from the sky and arcane arrows still erratically being fired after them from an indignant ranger who’s one hundred percent already taken enough damage to be dead for the purposes of this game. 

They’ve been doing a lot of sneaking around, but in the end all three of them are still barbarians at heart, and there’s something gloriously fun about just dumping damage on their dearest friends. 

The three of them work together like an extremely violent machine, but they’d all been stifling mischievous giggles as they crouched on the edge of the clearing. Zelda’d nodded to the little hideout Antiope’d built high up in a tree, Gorgug had passed each of them a couple of explosives, and all three of them opened fire, throwing bomb after bomb. Ragh’s got an aim like a laser sight, arcing one beautiful shot right through their roof. It felt like a midwinter snowball fight, all of them screaming wildly and hurling bombs without doing a whole lot of aiming because _who needs accuracy when you have Thistlespring-made arcane explosives_ and then sprinting away giggling like little kids. It’s just _fun_ and also the three of them are just, wel,l really good at this game. 

As her feet keep pounding on the forest floor, Zelda’s crystal vibrates in the front pocket of her hoodie. That’s probably Antiope texting the groupchat, but Zelda just lets it buzz—that’s something she can check later, but right now she’s dashing away from an explosion at top speed, full of too much adrenaline to slow down. It’s just the wind in her hair and her team at her back and the dust from their explosion probably still falling, far behind them now. Ragh lets out an exhilarated whoop as they sprint back through the forest, Zelda leading the way and glancing over her shoulder to make sure the boys are keeping up and Gorgug taking huge bounding steps with his springy sneakers. It’s fun to just _run_ , and she’s not sure where they’re going except for maybe back to the manor but right now they’re still far enough away that she can just let herself not think and just move. 

They get a good distance from the clearing and Zelda slows down to let Gorgug and Ragh catch up to her. Ragh opens his mouth like he’s about to suggest something, like maybe a direction for them to actually go in instead of just running for the hell of it. 

And then an absolutely giant spectral blue hand crashes through the underbrush and tries to grab her boyfriend, and there’s absolutely no way in the nine hells Zelda’s just going to let that happen. 

She screams and Gorgug ducks just in time and stumbles back to his feet. Rage thrums through her blood, even better than just adrenaline, and she hurls a javelin as hard as she can and it _bounces_ , barely doing anything. Oh _no_. 

“Holy shit, RUN!” Ragh yells, and he takes a sharp left through the underbrush because he lives here and probably knows these woods best. When Zelda throws her hand out Gorgug grabs it, and she pulls him along as they all take off again, this time for dear life. 

With a horrible buzzing noise, an orb of lightning sails right by her ear and Zelda leaps to tackle Gorgug out of the way. When they hit the dirt it’s with enough force that the wind gets knocked out of her, and Zelda rolls and only just gets her head up in time to see the lightning arc away through the forest to char the crap out of some poor tree. As if the giant hand wasn’t enough.

“Thanks, I think it’s Adaine!” Gorgug yells right in her ear, and Zelda’s still scrabbling hooves against pine needles as she gets back up, because that hand’s coming for them _now_. 

Ragh, thank gods for Ragh, appears next to them and yanks Gorgug to his feet as Zelda rights herself. “This is some wizard bullshit!” he shouts, and Gorgug just nods frantically and grabs Zelda’s hand as they keep going, following Ragh as he makes another sharp turn to try to shake off the hand.

 _Lucky wizards_ , Zelda huffs, because the hand gets to just pass through the branches like they’re nothing as it hurtles towards them along horrifyingly fast, lighting up the underbrush with glowing blue. 

“Stay away from my _boyfriend!_ ” Zelda screams as she looks over her shoulder to see it reaching out to swipe at him _again_. She can feel something roar in her ears as she whips around and fires a javelin again. Her aim is true and she can see the point spiralling towards the target and then—

It takes a second for her eyes to process what she’s seen because an orb of something acid and green whizzes past and slams right into her javelin in the air. She blinks and it’s just. Gone, dissolved into some sludge and a bit of molten metal that spatters on the forest floor.

It takes less than a second for Zelda to decide that this absolutely sucks and that they’re just going to have to _run_. 

“Stay away from my BRO!” Ragh roars behind her, and he just. Picks up Gorgug, all six feet and four inches of him, wrapping a hand around his legs and swiping him out of the Hand’s reach. They just book it as they all decide _fuck this, actually_. 

Zelda throws her last two javelins, Gorgug yells warnings to duck whenever he can see another orb coming from behind them, and Ragh tramples a path through the woods for them as they run and run and run. Eventually they start to leave Adaine (still hidden somewhere, probably—none of them are perceptive enough to figure out where she is) and the hand behind after zigzagging through what feels like half of the Far Haven Woods, probably startling a good few woodland animals. There’s something comforting about the easy rhythm of just moving, just them and the woods and Ragh pointing them wordlessly back in the direction of the manor as they all slow to an easier jog. 

When Gorgug runs it’s a bouncy half-lope, all superpowered springy converse and long limbs. And Zelda knows she runs like she dances, fleet of foot and light on her hooves. Ragh, on the other hand, runs like he’s personally trying to charge an entire opposing army. She hears more than sees him come up beside her, heavy footfall on the forest floor. When Zelda looks up she sees—that’s Gorgug, still slung over one of Ragh’s shoulders in half of a fireman’s carry.

Because it’s Ragh, and because it’s Gorgug, and both of them either haven’t noticed or are pretending they haven’t noticed that he still hasn’t put him down. 

It’s been a solid half a mile since they left the giant glowing hand in their dust. 

Interesting. 

Zelda drops back behind Ragh so she can look up at Gorgug, head and arms hanging over Ragh’s shoulder. She can’t help but give him a quick once-over, but aside from a streak of soot on his face from the firebombs an hours ago and some pine needles inexplicably stuck in his hair, he looks remarkably none the worse for wear for being the target of an absurd amount of wizard bullshit. 

He grins back at her from even taller than normal, not even flustered when she wiggles her eyebrows at him and at Ragh who can’t see them. 

“Do you guys want to run through the kitchen for lunch and eat it on the roof where Adaine can’t get us?” Gorgug just says.

“Hell yeah, roofwiches!” Ragh hollers back, turning to jog backwards for a second to join their conversation and in the process whipping Gorgug around like he’s on some kind of half-orc teacup ride. Dorks. 

They’re all still full of adrenaline and wearing goofy smiles that she’s pretty sure match her own. Zelda’s still not sure what roofwiches are, but at this point she doesn’t even care to ask.


	10. final four

Remaining Assassins players: Gorgug, Zelda, Adaine, Riz

* * *

_Zelda—_

It turns out roofwiches are the thing that you make when you dash through the kitchen door and grab an entire bag of sandwich bread, the jug of orange juice, and a jar of peanut butter off the counter before booking it for the stairs because a wizard is chasing you. They set up camp on the same patch of roof where they keep ending up and Gorgug methodically fixes everyone a sandwich (two sandwiches) (four sandwiches) (they just ran through what feels like half of this neck of the Far Haven woods, okay, and all of them eat a lot even when they haven’t just done that). By now, they’re full and happy, passing the gallon jug orange juice around like it’s a flask. Zelda nibbles on the twist tie that used to hold the bread bag closed. 

It’s been a chaotic morning, and now they’re just quietly sprawled out on the roof, soaking up some summer sun and catching their breath before they do whatever they do next. It’s only now that Zelda remembers she doesn’t technically know her next target, so she pulls out her crystal to check the groupchat. 

####  **_1:37pm_ **

**Antiope:** rip me

 **Riz:** And then there were four.

 **Penny:** wait who’s left?

 **Riz:** Me, Adaine, Gorgug, and Zelda. 

**Antiope:** yeah i’ll take top five

 **Katja:** anyone who lives at mordred know where we can grab some healing potions seriously we are so goddamn hurt

Zelda swipes over to check if Antiope’s texted just her, too.

_1:37pm_

**Antiope:** well

 **Antiope:** congrats, you incinerated my piece of paper so i guess i’ll just text you the name of your next target, you have riz

_2:04pm_

**Zelda:** sorry, was running through the woods

 **Zelda:** ragh said there’s healing potions in the hallway bathroom medicine cabinet 

**Zelda:** love you mom <3

 **Antiope:** young lady you’re grounded <3

 **Antiope:** your other mom will hear about this

 **Zelda:** i thought we blew up katja too, did you mean ostentatia

 **Antiope:** your other other mom will also hear about this

She keeps texting Antiope, easy banter and Maidens in-jokes. and only half paying attention to the boys still both sacked out on the roof. Gorgug’s half dozing, sprawled out like he always is, and this time he’s managed to end up with his head across Ragh’s legs like he’s a half-orc pillow. Ragh’s being super chill about it too, just lying back and looking up at the sky, but. Her boyfriend is just really cute and he’s lying on his _crush_ and Zelda wants him to be able to have this so badly. 

Zelda sees a frown come across Gorgug’s face as he thinks of something. “Wait, I forgot, are you hurt?” he says suddenly, bolting up and looking over at Ragh. “You, like, took that ball of acid right to the back, um, I can’t do much but I could cast spare the dying?”

Ragh just grins, big and happy. “Nah, man, I’m not dying here.” He throws an arm around Gorgug’s shoulders and Zelda can tell even without looking at him that Gorgug is holding himself very very still. 

“Hey. Gorgug? No problem. Really.” Ragh moves around to look right at Gorgug as he says it, two very intense pairs of black eyes looking at each other. He’s leaned in to rest his forehead against Gorgug’s and Zelda’s pretty sure they’ve both forgotten she’s here. She does her best to text as quietly as possible. 

Gorgug swallows, and is he going to finally— “Um. Right. Thanks, man,” he says, and Zelda resists the urge to very gently facepalm. 

Gods. One of them needs to make a move, Zelda’s watched Ostentatia and Danielle slowly go from enemies to girlfriends over the course of one very long spring break and it was less painful than this. 

* * *

_Ragh—_

Gorgug’s just so very tactile, always holding hands with Zelda or at the bottom of a Bad Kids cuddle pile or, in this case, lying down and using Ragh as a pillow. Ragh feels—drunk, in the best way, from the still-fading adrenaline of their sprint through the woods and from the sun warming all of him up here on the roof and from Gorgug _right there_. 

For all his hiding in comfortable hoodies, Ragh thinks Gorgug’s most comfortable in the sun, running the field at practice or practicing with Fig in the driveway of Mordred as Ragh comes home or just like this on the roof as they try to figure out what to do next. Limbs all sprawled out to soak it in and dark hair almost hot to the touch. He’s cute when he’s nervous, Ragh already knows this, but he’s cute when he’s this kind of bonelessly carefree too. 

He doesn’t know how he was supposed to not fall for Gorgug, so soft and so strong at the same time, falling into Ragh’s life like he’d caught the perfect bloodrush pass. Like kissing Ragh at prom and taking Ragh on quests and coming to Ragh with help-me-not-kill-Zelda crises and lying on Ragh in the sun are all as exactly as natural and easy. Gorgug asks a lot of questions, but it’s like he thinks Ragh is a constant. 

For a second he’d thought Gorgug had been on the verge of asking something different when he pulled Ragh into the hallway of the manor last night, nervous and half-lit. Sometimes Ragh does think there’s something there, that Gorgug might his friends but he doesn’t invite all of them to spar with him and his girlfriend all summer, doesn’t pull them into dark hallways and ask nervously for advice, doesn’t try to show off the spells that he honestly doesn’t use that much otherwise. 

But Gorgug has Zelda, Ragh keeps reminding himself, and the more time he’s spent with Zelda this weekend the less and less he ever wants to break up whatever they have here. Zelda is sweet and also a really good tactician and also kind of bloodthirsty and thoroughly able to slit his throat at all times and most importantly just someone he wants to be friends with, so Ragh would never. He’s fine like this; he’ll take getting to have Gorgug be tactile and comfortable with him like he is with all his friends. 

Ragh watches Gorgug’s forehead crease as he suddenly bolts upright. “Wait, I forgot, are you hurt? You, like, took that ball of acid right to the back, um, I can’t do much but I could cast spare the dying?” Ragh thinks about the personal checklist he’s definitely not been making in his head of times Gorgug looks especially cute. Nervous, check. Thoughtful, check. 

Gorgug sitting up so fast puts him _directly_ in Ragh’s face and Ragh swallows as he tries to say as naturally as possible, drawling out the sounds, “Nah, man, I’m not dying here.” And Gorgug’s always touching him so it’s okay if he takes the opportunity to put an arm around his shoulders, still carefully on the “just a good bro” side of the line but still wanting to provide some comfort if he can. “Hey, Gorgug? No problem. Really.” A spritz of acid is no problem, Ragh wants to say, and you’re not a problem, ever. 

“Um. Right. Thanks, man.” Like a cloud passing over the sun, whatever just made Gorgug freak out fades, and he just goes right back to lying down. On Ragh. No problem. Relaxed, check that box too. Maybe Gorgug being cute is just an all the time thing. 

But it’s a good time to be relaxed—Ragh isn’t really sure what they can do from here, if Adaine and Riz are the only ones left. Both of them are too sneaky and smart for a band of barbs to really know where to find them. He looks over at Zelda, who’s stopped tapping at her phone and is tapping her chin, staring off the edge of the roof into space. Their tactician. 

Suddenly Zelda spots something and drops flat to the roof lightning-fast, eyes tracking something on the ground below them. Gorgug’s eyes snap open and he rolls of Ragh, and all three of them crawl carefully to the edge of the roof so they can see. 

“What are we looking at?” Gorgug whispers.

Zelda just points her chin at—that’s Adaine, crouched on the front lawn next to the wall right below them and both her hands held out towards the forest like she’s waiting for something to come out. 

And then something does come out, a goblin swinging on a grappling hook so fast Ragh just sees the flash of light on the wire a split second before he hears the arquebus shot and Adaine drops to the ground.

But she’s down but not out because is that a _giant silvery fist_ she just summoned, and Riz is leaping backwards, tail helicoptering as he dodges. 

Ragh feels frozen to the roof because there is some _wild_ shit happening down there: Adaine shooting web out in front of her to tangle up the net Riz fires at her as she tries to stand up, Riz running from a truly fuckoff massive silvery hand and Adaine screaming in rage. 

If this didn’t look so badass, Ragh thinks it’d be funny, the two squishiest party members duking it out. But then Riz levels the Sword of Shadows at Adaine, her own sword knocked aside on the ground, and he can see her pulling out her phone and saying something, probably in surrender since she’s pressing a hand against her side. 

Adaine’s down. Riz is still there. 

Zelda looks at Ragh and they both know they have to get the drop on Riz _now_ , the second Adaine texts in that she’s dead and that there are only three of them left. He motions to Gorgug and they make a little saddle with their hands that Zelda steps up into, tucking herself into a little ball and bracing. It’s only a few seconds until—

_3:25pm_

**Adaine:** well i’m dead

“GO!” Ragh roars, and he and Gorgug fling Zelda into the air and then just watch as she sails through the air as fast as one of Riz’s own bullets. It’s a little brown blur and a little green dot down on the ground and Zelda falls, a perfect arc whose shadow only crosses over Riz a second before he really looks up, too late to do anything. 

Gorgug’s whole face lights up and he starts swinging a leg over the side of the roof so they can climb down. “How often do you think Riz is the one who gets surprise attacked?” he grins, and he’s just so happy for her that it’s infectious. Ragh’s gonna try his best to climb down from this roof and watch at the same time because it’s _wild_ , Riz’s arquebus coming up to fire but Zelda’s there first, slashing with twin scimitars and absolutely in her element, hopping around to dodge shot after shot after shot. 

Zelda doesn’t even need them, and by the time Gorgug runs up to her she’s sitting neatly cross-legged on Riz’s chest as he rolls his eyes at them. There are a bunch of Maidens and Bad Kids poking their head out the front door to watch it all, too, probably summoned by Adaine. Zelda’s just serenely holding up a scimitar that’s neatly skewered a little piece of paper like a fancy appetizer on a toothpick. Must be Riz’s target’s name.

“Where did you even _come_ from?” Riz sputters, already reaching for his phone to send his text. He’s typing erratically, eyes still wide and trying to figure out how exactly this satyr girl landed on him going about a hundred miles per hour. Ragh can almost hear his brain whirring. 

Zelda just climbs off Riz’s chest so he can sit up and type properly, walking up to Gorgug and twining their hands together. Her other hand is still holding a scimitar, Ragh notes, but Gorgug just puts their hands together into his hoodie pocket, like he’s keeping them warm. Cute and deadly at the same time. 

“I think we’re calling it the fast-barb special?” Zelda grins. “It, um, it takes three barbarians to do but basically it’s when they throw me off the roof.”

Riz looks at her like she’s crazy. 

“It’s a super hard throw,” Zelda clarifies, and Gorgug nods like this makes sense. Riz shakes his head. And then seems to realize something. He squints at Gorgug and Zelda again, and it makes Ragh want to gently push him backwards. What’s up with Riz?

Riz hovers his thumb over the send button. “I’ll take top three,” he says slowly, but you guys do realize that—“

Gorgug looks a little confused. Ragh is also very confused, but he tries to follow where Riz’s brain is going (this is going to make his head hurt, isn’t it). And then realizes.

Top three.

Now top two.

Zelda and Gorgug. 

He promised Gorgug he was going to help him not have to kill Zelda.

Because that’d be _mean_.

It’s just the two of them. 

Ragh makes a split second choice and drops his glaive, just absolutely leaping uncaring of anything in his way. Faintly he’s aware of Riz’s crystal clattering from his hand as he dives out of Ragh’s path, a little goblin’s shadow dwarfed by Ragh’s because he is a half-orc on a mission and this is for his _bro_.


	11. kills and kisses

Remaining Assassins players: ~~Gorgug~~ , Zelda

* * *

_Gorgug—_

One second Gorgug is holding his girlfriend’s hand, tucking it into his hoodie pocket like they’ve made a habit of doing together, and Riz is saying something. 

The next second Gorgug’s pretty sure a small tornado just swept through the square he was standing in and left chaos behind. It’s like video clips load into his mind in reverse order as he’s gaping, standing exactly where he was add trying to put it together. 

Ragh, yelling, leaping, shadow across Gorgug’s whole body, a small part of his brain that took him right back to the first day of freshman year. 

A thump and a flip and a blur of motion and Ragh, on his ass, breath knocked out of him, on the ground right next to Gorgug. 

Zelda, bouncing on the tips of her hooves gleefully three feet away from where she was standing, a little piece of paper in her hand. 

Her hand, which isn’t in Gorgug’s pocket.

Zelda _giggles_. “I think that’s a kill, boys,” she says. And unfolds the paper. 

It says Zelda Donovan. 

It’s Gorgug’s paper.

She just killed him. 

Ragh just jumped at her (for him? Gorgug’s mind is going a mile a minute and he shelves that for a second) and she absolutely dumped him on his ass and then leaped away from Gorgug and _her hand was in his pocket oh that was a sneaky plan he’d forgotten he had his paper in there_ and he’s so freaking dead, he’s so freaking dead and Zelda just won. 

There’s a _roar_ as the Maidens pile out the front door and swarm Zelda and Gorgug’s pretty sure she’s ended up on one of their shoulders somehow and his jaw is still hanging so open that he might catch flies. 

Riz, lying on the grass next to Ragh, sputters. “You can’t kill your next target until the previous one’s texted in their death! I didn’t send my text!” 

Katja hefts an axe and side-eyes him and even Riz blanches. “Let her have this, Gukgak,” she growls, and Riz’s ears flatten against the side of his head. 

This is real, he didn’t have to kill his girlfriend and Ragh just got flipped on his ass by Zelda and he’s absolutely going to let her have this. Someone’s smushed a paper crown onto Zelda’s head (it doesn’t fit super great, thanks to her horns) and she’s up on Antiope’s shoulders and Gorgug just lets himself tip his head back and laugh. Never in a million years could he have guessed how this was going to end up; never in a million years could it have gone so perfectly. 

Zelda leans over to the side and she’s taller than Gorgug when Antiope’s carrying her. She gets to do what he always does, drop a kiss on the top of his head. He takes it, still unable to stop grinning. He can’t even be mad, Zelda just won! Zelda just won and he didn’t have to kill her and this is _crazy_

“You were right,” he says, going up on his tiptoes to kiss her properly. Antiope clears her throat pointedly where she’s trying to brace so Zelda doesn’t fall off her shoulders, and Gorgug flushes and pulls away. 

Zelda just shrugs, sweet as pie. “Maybe a little bit of cheating, but.” Gorgug punches her lightly in the shoulder, but Zelda’s glowing and proud and also badass as all hell. “All’s fair in love and war?” she suggests, and it’s the cheesiest possible line but Gorgug finds himself falling for it anyway. He can’t even really properly mind. 

* * *

Before the Maidens take her to go celebrate noisily who-knows-where Zelda points back at Gorgug. He scrambles for the copper wire in his pocket to cast the spell just in time for her to give him a sneaky look from under her bangs and Message back to him, _Go ask out your white knight!_

He casts it again indignantly, intending to say something snarky back, but he’s too busy sputtering to actually say anything and it just gives Zelda the opportunity to tease, _At least, like, you can still do that even if you LOST_ with a far-too-evil grin before the Maidens and the rest of the Bad Kids disappear loudly into the manor, probably to celebrate a thorough whomping with an even more thorough rager.

Gorgug blinks and—Ragh’s still on his butt on the ground, looking a little shell-shocked (Zelda’s shoulder throws will do that to a person). 

“You, um. You Attacked Zelda? For me?”

Ragh looks sheepish. “Your girlfriend’s the fucking coolest and she wiped the _floor_ with me, but. Of course, bro. Like, I should have known it wouldn’t work, by now, but I for sure was gonna try.” He looks apologetic and Gorgug doesn’t understand why, but he knows he wants that look off Ragh’s face as soon possible.

Gorgug’s still processing. _I thought you guys were being really good friends, we all were working so well together, why would you attack her instead of me?_ He offers a hand to Ragh to help him up and then immediately realizes that’s stupid, Ragh’s stronger than him any day of the week. Ragh doesn’t need it. 

But Ragh just takes his hand and gets to his feet. And then he _doesn’t let go_ , just standing in Gorgug’s space because neither of them have stepped back. 

Maybe Gorgug was the one who needs it. 

_Between the two of us because you promised to help me—_

Ragh doesn’t let go, just squeezes his hand back, and Gorgug can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not. Ragh has big hands, Gorgug’s brain reminds him for no reason at all. Ragh has big eyes too, looking earnest and apologetic and serious, and he looks at Gorgug and shakes his head and says, “Anything for my best dude, but like. I’m so sorry my guy, I wasn’t fast enough, I mean it’s cool that Zelda won but it’s totally chill if you’re upset, are you okay?”

Ragh’s talking about. Assassins. Right. Ragh’s making sad puppy dog eyes right now because he’s apologizing. To Gorgug? They spent the whole weekend running around and helping Zelda with her really cool plans but the second it was just her and Gorgug, Ragh didn’t even think before jumping to Gorgug’s aid and—it’s a lot. That’s a lot. Ragh’s talking about how he’s spent the weekend becoming really good friends with Zelda and how it’s been lighting up Gorgug’s whole chest because his girlfriend and his crush are getting along.

His crush. 

Who he’s standing very very close to right now and they’ve just spent the whole weekend together and everyone else is inside and it’s starting to get dark out here. 

“I— hold on, sorry, I just. Give me a second.” Forget the freaking game, Gorgug doesn’t know if he’s ever thought less about Assassins in his whole entire life. His heart’s pounding like _he’s_ the one who just got flipped onto his back and slammed into the ground. Because Ragh just did that. For him. Gorgug didn’t think he was into big gestures, but he’s just overcome by _just how much_ that just was and he wants to. He wants. He’s not looking at Ragh—he doesn’t think he could even look at Ragh right now if he wanted to—but he ducks his head away and tries to get the right words in his mouth.

“You—” Gorgug looks at his shoes, looks at his hoodie strings and tries to tamp down the urge to put them in his mouth right now, looks at his hands. 

His hand, that Ragh hasn’t let go of.

His hand, that Ragh just squeezes gently as he waits for him to work up the courage.

Because Ragh gets it, doesn’t he, he’s loud where Gorgug is quiet but he gets not being the smartest person in the room who needs a second more to put the words together. What happens is that all the words come out at once“I just—you did _what_ for me, that’s freaking crazy, I can’t even _process_ what that was, I thought you and Zelda were like best friends now and you guys have that thing where you just throw her at enemies and I’m just so glad you guys are friends now because I’ve been wanting to—Can I kiss you?” For a second after he says it he doesn’t know if he did or if the words have just been echoing around his brain for so long that he’s just imagined it. 

And then Ragh barks a sharp laugh and Gorgug’s blood runs _cold, gods, what has he done,_ but Ragh’s just pausing, surprised before anything else. “Zelda won’t mind?”

But Ragh hasn’t let go of his hand and Gorgug lets out an exhale-laugh of his own, because. Of course. His heart is still hammering like he’s just come out of combat but—“No, we’ve. We’ve talked about it, she’s been rooting for it actually, I’m sorry—“

Ragh hasn’t let go of his hand and Gorgug finds himself making eye contact, watching the hesitation clear from his face. Ragh blinks slowly and _is this happening in slow motion? It feels like someone’s stopped time_ and Gorgug’s getting distracted by his eyelashes of all things and he’s not sure what sentence he was trying to finish anymore. It’s like prom back in freshman year all over again, feels like an axe raised overhead ready to swing down and a dragon roaring and time slowing just for them—

And before Gorgug can even finish whatever he was trying to apologize for, Ragh visibly takes a deep breath and closes the distance and kisses him. 

Kissing Ragh is—wow. Kissing Ragh feels familiar and new at once. Kissing Ragh feels like he should have done it sooner; kissing Ragh feels like the perfect time. One hand is still twined around Ragh’s but Gorgug brings his other one up to curve around the shell of Ragh’s ear and run his thumb over his bristly shaved sides, because he’s been wanting to do that for a long time now. Ragh kisses like he’s charging into combat and it’s so very _Ragh_ , loud and proud and happy. Their tusks bump—tusks when kissing, that’s a new thing too—but Ragh just tilts his head and keeps pushing, taking the lead in a way that Zelda doesn’t but that feels new and good and right. 

They pull apart. There’s a roar in his chest or maybe it’s the sound of blood rushing in his ears but he’s afraid to let himself lean into this feeling until he knows Ragh meant it. He looks at Ragh (doesn’t let his eyes drop down to look at his lips. Doesn’t look further down at his chest either. Nope.) and sees nothing but the same feeling looking back at him. 

Ragh leans in to just bump their foreheads together and breathes out another laugh, smiling at him. “Whoo. Wow. I’ve been— I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.” 

“I’m sorry, I’ve. Like. Me too. But you? You what?” Words have stopped making sense but Gorgug doesn’t even care, he’ll ask his questions a million times until he gets it right and he knows in his heart Ragh won’t mind. 

“I’ve liked you for a long time, dude, yeah.” Ragh’s still holding onto Gorgug’s hand (Gorgug always wants to be holding onto Ragh’s hand, they’re warm and big and have familiar calluses in all the same places Gorgug’s do) but he makes some weird half-flailing gesture with the other, like he’s waving something away. “But it’s not a big deal, I don’t think I was ever ready to tell you before, and you and Zelda were always really good, and I didn’t think you liked me back, it was just. Whew. You’re amazing.”

“I’m sorry too,” he says, “I was trying to be ready to tell you too, for a while, but.” He shrugs and because their foreheads are still pressed together it moves Ragh a little bit too. They’re so close Gorgug gets to watch Ragh’s eyes go down to his lips and back up again, and he’s not the smartest person most of the time but he knows what that means. “I like you a lot,” Gorgug tries earnestly, “And I’d love to— to date you, or like, kiss again, I didn’t mean to wait a year between the last one and now, I just.” 

He doesn’t know what he was trying to say, but Ragh’s been nodding the whole time and so Gorgug thinks it’s probably safe that this time he’s the one to lean in.

Gorgug kisses Ragh, and it’s the third time but truly no one is counting. Ragh’s hands come up to tuck Gorgug’s hair behind his ears which makes Gorgug realize he’s probably allowed to _touch_ now so he does, running his hands over Ragh’s sides over his tank top. Neither of them really know how to deal with their tusks still and when they grate together they break apart, both of them laughing. 

They haven’t moved ever since he pulled Ragh up. Ragh just keeps smiling at him, big and a little goofy. Gorgug wants to laugh—he can’t believe he was nervous about this. He finds himself smiling back, for once wanting to be as big and loud and proud as Ragh is all the time. Ragh finds his hand again (he let go to run his fingers through Gorgug’s hair, and Gorgug can’t say he minded that) and says, “I’d’ve attacked someone for you way sooner if I thought it meant you were going to do _that_.”

Ragh’s joking, wide smile and tusks poking out, but he can’t just say things like that without Gorgug leaning in to kiss him again. 

* * *

There’s starting to be a dull roar and the sound of the Infaethable Bass coming from inside the Manor when Zelda finally pokes her head out. She’s put her hood up and there’s an already slightly crushed paper crown that says “Queen of Assassins” balanced precariously on top of it, between her horns. The second she sees Gorgug and Ragh, barely moved from where she flipped Ragh on his ass like an hour ago, Zelda just sticks her hands in her hoodie pocket and walks closer to them slowly, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

Ragh puts a huge hand on the top of Gorgug’s head and pats his hair down gently, like that’s going to fix all the mess he’s made of it while they were kissing. And smiling dopily at each other and talking, but also a lot of kissing. Ragh doesn’t even bother to keep the grin off his face as he says confidentially, “Chill, dude, he’s like. Moping his loss or whatever.” 

Zelda comes up to Gorgug and headbutts him gently in the side, her paper crown falling down onto the lawn. This is routine for them, and so he sticks out a hand and she knits her fingers through his and sticks their hands together back into her warm hoodie pocket, saying, “Haha, that’s like, so weird? Because like, you super don’t seem like you’re moping.” 

Gorgug looks down at her indignantly and finds her looking innocently back up at him with an absolutely shit-eating grin from behind a convenient little bubble of hair all tucked up in her hood. He can’t do anything but shake his head. His girlfriend is a _menace_. 

“Got himself killed, got himself a new boyfriend, it’s a fuckin’ lot to deal with in one day, y’know,” Ragh says, ticking them off on his fingers. Like he can just say that and it’s not a big deal. Like it’s not one of the best things that’s ever happened to Gorgug. He’s starting to think that his boyfriend is a menace too.

Zelda’s eyebrows start going up on “boyfriend,” and she wordlessly offers Ragh a fist bump that he gleefully accepts. “He finally asked you out, that’s super awesome! I’m so glad for you guys.”

“Wait, what? Finally?”

“Nothing! That was just, like, super random. But if you guys are done, um, like, making out, I actually came out because Kristen wanted me to show her some steps of the battle dance? And like, you said earlier that you’d maybe be interested in learning some of it too, Ragh, so I figured?”

“FUCK yeah, dude, for sure! You fucking dumped me on my ass like an hour ago, like, one _hundred_ percent I want to learn about the thing you’re doing that lets you do that. Fuckin’ hell yeah!” 

And both of them look at Gorgug, but really they’re also talking mostly to each other, so he trots along after Zelda as they head back into the manor and tries to un-mess-up his hair with one hand (it’s hopeless, he’s gonna have to ask Fig or someone for help and he’s definitely going to get teased to the Nine Hells and back. He can’t really bring himself to mind).

“Okay, wait, Zelda, dude, like. Did I hear you right though? _Kristen_ asked to learn dance steps from you? But she has, like—”

“Yeah, I mean, maybe this is so stupid but like, I figured it couldn’t hurt to show her some simple steps? But she totally has—”

“ _Shit_ dex,” they say at the same time, and even though most of Gorgug knows he’s going to step in and say something and defend his party cleric against _both_ his partners, part of him is just glad they’re such good friends, just wants to listen to them banter like this and hang on to both their hands and walk towards the light coming out the living room windows of the manor with no urgency at all. (And also, part of him absolutely agrees. There are many things he loves about his friends, but Kristen’s dex is in fact garbage.)

* * *

Zelda opens the door because both of Gorgug’s hands are very occupied (holding his partners’ hands! Both of them!) and Kristen wolf-whistles loudly because if the hand-holding didn’t make it obvious what they were doing out here for an hour (an hour!) Gorgug’s manhandled hair definitely would. Fig saves his life and his remaining dignity by being a welcome distraction, plugging in her bass and striking up a song to _let this battle dance lesson commence, already!_ because after two years of friendship Gorgug’s dead certain she can read his mind. He will not be convinced otherwise.

He decides he’s going to park himself in the squishiest corner of the couch and flatly refuse to be dragged into any dance lessons. Not because he doesn’t want to learn, but because he he still can’t believe he gets to have any of this, and he thinks he’s allowed a couple of minutes to just. Process. Enjoy. Soak in. Whatever you want to call it.

He’s going to get to watch his boyfriend stumble through the steps of his girlfriend’s battle dance even though the steps are designed for someone about half his size and twice his dexterity. He’s going to get to watch Zelda do that thing where she dips and bobs right into people’s spaces (and probably scares them half the time because no one ever sees Zelda coming) as she darts around Ragh and Kristen and probably also Fig and Sam and Aelwyn because they’re all going to try, even if getting them to use proper form is already a long lost cause.

Gorgug gets to have Ragh being so very _Ragh_ and Zelda being so very _Zelda_ and he wants to think, _how did I ever get so lucky_.

And he hopes he’s going to keep being this lucky for a long time. Gorgug’s usually a pretty practical guy, one who likes spells that come from a multitool and damage that comes from a battleaxe he hefts with two hands, but he lets himself dream about maybe some less practical things for a while. Stealing Ragh’s varsity jacket like Zelda steals all his hoodies. Driving them all out in the Hangvan to the beach sometime so that Ragh can throw Zelda and also him ten feet off the shore into the breaks. Taking Ragh out to Basrar’s and finding out what his favorite flavor is—Gorgug knows Zelda’s, and he knows Fig’s from long weeks on tour, but he’s looking forward to learning Ragh’s. Only half reluctantly letting himself get talked into going to some of the wilder parties, far more Ragh’s style than Zelda‘s. Building Ragh a crystal battery pack for when he leaves for Fallinel, surprising him with it and a goodbye kiss at the runeport when he and Tracker are about to go, later this summer. Finding even more excuses to be at the Manor all summer until they do. 

It’s been a wild weekend, spells and weapons and betrayals and assassinations, but Gorgug gets to have these things. And some time just being a happy wallflower on the couch. And Ragh coming over and stealing an earbud, and Zelda coming over to take his other one, and Gorgug can’t bring himself to be mad in the slightest. 

* * *

_11:02pm_

_Zelda Donovan made a groupchat with Ragh Barkrock and Gorgug Thistlespring._

**Gorgug:** zelda what

 **Ragh:** i get it, it’s like all your partners in one place

 **Ragh:** you’ve got so much fucking love coming your way you better be ready

 **Zelda:** you better also be ready for sparring practice tomorrow morning. my place?

 **Ragh:** you’ve got so much fucking love and also glaive attacks coming your way you better be ready

 **Zelda** : see ragh you get me

**Author's Note:**

> These three kiddos are the most fun to write and I really hope you enjoyed reading as much as I had fun writing them! (Gorgug has two hands and then I wrote 30k about it). 
> 
> This work was written for the 2020 Dimension 20 Big Bang and is by far the biggest fic project I've ever written! (Mods, I would sell my soul to you in a heartbeat, you deserve all the thanks in the world for putting up with us and organizing all this!)
> 
> Title is from "Assassin" by Muse!
> 
> My artist partner Juniper made an amazing Wes Anderson-esque piece of the whole manor that the previews in this fic by no means do justice to! You can see her full piece [here](https://ecstaticunicorns.tumblr.com/post/638437898033790976/the-d20-big-bang-is-here-d20bigbang-im-so) on their tumblr [@ecstaticunicorns](https://ecstaticunicorns.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Kudos and comments are like Adaine's Prestidigitated popcorn—extremely fun, and food for the soul! I reply to every one :D
> 
> This fic is rebloggable [here](https://mordredmanor.tumblr.com/post/638438469926043648/actualize-the-first-attack-chapter-1) on my tumblr [@mordredmanor](https://mordredmanor.tumblr.com/) and you can also retweet it [here](https://twitter.com/aempirical/status/1342299947228516352?s=20)!


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